Despite the recent growth of the retailing sector in our country with many manufacturers and big distributors getting on to the retail bandwagon, channel partners need not be unduly worried about a slow down in their business?
It is true that retailing is gaining in popularity, however retail stores and malls are still in their infancy in our country. Although it is a craze among consumers nowadays to buy products from these outlets, many a new entrants into this segment have already started realizing the pain-points of running such big stores.
A major problem of running big retailing stores or malls, which many of the small groups are experiencing today, is retaining the profitability of the overall business establishment. Instead of becoming cost-effective, maintenance of such big sales points, in many cases, is turning out to be exactly the reverse. Many mall owners have already started charging exorbitantly for the places that they sublet to the shop owners. Thereby, maintaining a reasonable price range for selling products is becoming more and more difficult for individual shop runners in these big establishments. Many of them are now preferring a let-out.
A positive trend for channel partners is that IT products or telecom products constitute such sets of commodity where prices are falling very fast. Also, in this era of convergence, IT and telecom together are coming out as ICT and penetrating in the remote areas of the country. How many malls or big retailing shops are functioning there or will do that in the near future? When the government is stressing on rural penetration of ICT, where is the threat visible for the efficient channel partners?
Finally, as many of our resellers have already started working on elevating their skill levels to become value-added partners, their business portfolio is also changing.
As everyone whether in business or home sector – prefers having a reliable IT partner within reach (in the sense of proximity, price, preference and so on), if a reseller can add a new dimension above just selling products (say) by generating goodwill through better guidance, service assistance and appropriate pricing – why should he or she be worried?
As our government is determined to focus on IT & Telecom deployment in semi-urban, and especially the rural areas, ICT product resellers will find a better business opportunity in these areas in the coming days. In the urban areas, although apparently a part of the business will go to the retail sector, component business will be the strong forte of the resellers. However, resellers need to remain united.