Friday 30 October 2015

Firecrackers dotting the virtual sky with online sales

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Everything is going online today, including firecrackers. The trend of selling firecrackers online is slowly picking up in India. Leading online grocery storeBigBasket is selling close to 44 firework products in its website. Sellers in the fireworks hub of Sivakasi (Tamil Nadu, which is the traditional fireworks stronghold) say that legal and other hurdles are affecting the sales.

Stiff competition from cheaper Chinese variants

Retail sellers are hesitating to buy crackers due to stringent license laws. This leaves the manufacturers in the lurch. There is also the problem of cheap Chinese crackers that are flooding the market. All put together, many manufacturers are slowly turning to the online medium to sell their fireworks.
“There are a lot of problems with traditional retailers now. There are very stringent conditions they have to deal with and very short term licences allowed for most of them. We have noticed that many are actually willing to give selling crackers a miss, especially with the Chinese threat looming in the background,” says K Mariappan, a member of the Tamil Nadu Fireworks and Amorces Manufacturers Association and owner of Sri Arumugam Fireworks, which has recently gone online.

Online fireworks sales are crackling

It appears as though the online route is working. Abhilash Sankar, owner of mycrackers.com, has been selling crackers for the past four years, and feels that things are steadily improving.
He says, “I have seen revenues rise nearly three times every consecutive year. This year, the increase has been five-fold and the season is not even over yet.”
However, there are other problems. Storage is an issue for online sellers.According to Sankar, “We cannot make regular door-to-door delivery without having warehouses and storage points at many centres. But getting licence for a warehouse that can store firecrackers is a very difficult task. The acquiring of a single such licence costs up to 3 lakh.”

Anything sells online

Thanks to technology, almost everything is available online today. Even kitchen waste, literally, is available at the click of a mouse. Amazon and EBay are selling natural fertilizers and soil in their pages. Pasuthai.com, a Bangalore-based organic cow farm, also sells manure made from cow waste – or to put it simply – cow dung.
It is nice to know that we live in an era where even cow dung travels through virtual channels to reach our doorstep!

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