The success of big sale events is heavily dependent on logistics and delivery. None of the ecommerce companies wants to face the wrath of buyers waiting for their package around holidays.
With that in mind, Amazon is busy expanding its last mile delivery network to meet the festive demand. The ecommerce giant had launched a pilot delivery program ‘I Have Space’ last year in May. For the pilot program, it had tied-up with 2,500 local stores to assist in ecommerce delivery.
As of now, the marketplace has roped in 12,500 local stores spread across 50 cities, including tier 2 & tier 3 cities. And the etailer is looking to expand this number ahead of festive season.
“We have added 10,000 stores this year, which cut across stationery stores, corner stores, modern trade outlets, telecom shops, beauty stores and others. These will double up as pick-up points and some of them are also enabled to handle returns. Being a part of the programme will also drive footfalls to drive footfalls to these stores,” said Akhil Saxena, VP – India Customer Fulfilment at Amazon India.
Local stores are trusted with the responsibility to:
- Handle express and standard deliveries within a radius of 2 to 4 k
- Deliver 20-30 orders a day on an average during non-peak hour
- Daily cash on delivery reconciliation
The storeowners are paid monthly for each package delivered.
Besides expanding its local delivery network, Amazon is also organizing grooming camps to train sellers and launched fulfilment centre in Chennai as part of its festive sales prep.
But are sellers as excited as ecommerce firms?
Amazon is setting up grooming camps. Snapdeal is making changes to commissions. And Flipkart is working on a reward campaign for sellers. All for the peak sale season coming this Diwali.
But not all sellers are enticed by all this.
Few vendors are concerned about the lack of discounts due to change in ecommerce policies and increased cost due to recent changes in commissions.
“Costs have increased from the range of 2% on higher GMV categories to as much as 20% on low GMV items. There may not be steep discounts this time, but it is not likely to affect sales as consumers have realised there is a change when it comes to online shopping,” said eSeller Suraksha’s spokesperson Sanjay Thakur.
Some vendors are wary of ecommerce companies’ infrastructure and capacity limitations to handle surge in demand.
While speaking to Indian Online Seller, All India Online Vendors’ Association’s (AIOVA) representative shares,
“Sellers are always looking forward to festivals. However, this time sellers are going to be very cautious due to the debacle that happened last year due to capacity issues of marketplaces.”
He adds,
“Sellers are not planning on increasing stocks just for the special sales days because there is no improvement in fulfillment and delivery infrastructure of marketplaces.”
Online sellers, is it true? Are you cautious as well this festive season? Are the programs launched by ecommerce biggies enough to make you happy?
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