Bengaluru, April 23: Tough times are a good way to differentiate the men from the boys. Channel partners, getting panicky about receding business avenues, have all but ignored gold retailers across the city, more than half of whom are suffering from technology ignorance but are keen to invest in IT to turn the corner.
The gold retailers in Bengaluru, who were very conservative in their approach until recently, are now turning tech-savvy. Owing to the constant fluctuation of gold rates of around three times in a day, the retailers are now forced to know keep track of the developments. Also, with more users going e-shopping, the gold retailers are feeling the need to adopt e-commerce within their organisation and create a portal.
“The biggest challenge is to have a control over the stocks. Many feel that a Rs. 30,000 deployment is costly, but they should realize that it would help them protect their stocks worth millions. With proper ERP system on place, the retailers can know which stock is moving fast and which is not,” says ‘Davanam’ V Ramesh, a leading retailer in Bengaluru.
He also added that like other industries, gold retailers have to bring in some processes and system as their customers are expecting better service. Another retailer revealed is that theirs was a family-run outfit, which contended in selling jewellery to select customers in their neighborhood. But now they see an opportunity to market their products beyond their locality and feels investments in IT can help them grow their business.
Another opportunity for the partners is the CCTV surveillance and most of the shops do not have one. “They may be in India’s tech hub, but just 20 percent of Bangalore’s jewelers have adopted IT in their business. There are multiple reasons for them of not investing in IT like growth and market reach, customer-convenience, demand and supply, e-payments and social marketing”, says Manjunath Nanjaiah, CEO and Founder, SchemesCentral, which is one of the leading e-schemes portal for jewelers.