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Tag: ShopClues

  • ShopClues partners NSFDC to promote rural craft & artisans

    ShopClues partners NSFDC to promote rural craft & artisans

    MUMBAI: ShopClues.com, a multi-category online marketplace, has joined hands with National Scheduled Castes Finance & Development Corporation (NSFDC) to support hundreds of smaller sellers and artisans from backward classes to find a wider market for their goods.

     

    The company has entered into an MoU with NSFDC, which is a Government of India undertaking under the aegis of Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment. The vision behind this partnership is to provide a robust online marketing platform to the products made by NSFDC beneficiaries. This way, they expand their reach tremendously and the customers of ShopClues get ready access to their stellar productions. 

     

    ShopClues will also provide training, infrastructural support in marketing, data analytics and customer acquisition to the NSFDC beneficiaries. Their catalogues will become a part of the ShopClues’ National Retail Heritage (NRH), which has previously pushed sales for numerous local manufacturers and artisans. NRH is an effort by ShopClues to bring online, the most popular markets of India that are famous for their unique product offering.

     

    ShopClues.com CEO & co-founder Sanjay Sethi said, “We saw an immense potential for the NSFDC beneficiaries in the e-commerce revolution that is happening in the country. They not only get to leverage our platform, but also gain confidence in their work thanks to the enhanced sales, professional training and exposure that they will get via ShopClues. We look forward to expanding the scope of our CSR initiatives in a similar manner that leads to a win-win situation for the retailers, for us and for our customers.”

     

    NSFDC CMD RK Singh added, “The purpose of our association with ShopClues.com is to economically empower the scheduled caste artisans by providing them an online e-retailing platform and mentoring to organize them in cluster mode,  upgrade their product quality and upscale their production to meet the marketing demand. This would enable them to earn sustainable incomes in the long run and become successful entrepreneurs. Online marketplaces like ShopClues has democratized brand-creation – so, we’re hoping that the merchandise produced by our community finds mass-appeal and these artisans get recognition in India and abroad.”

     

    ShopClues will help the ministry to prepare catalogue of products for the beneficiaries with attractive pictures, accurate prices, descriptions etc. and display it on its website. It will also update this catalogue periodically to drive sales. The team at ShopClues will intimate the local sellers through e-mail, SMS or telephone about orders from buyers. Payments will be made to the vendor/seller through RTGS/NEFT after the delivery of goods. Also on the anvil is a classroom and on-the-job training for sellers on e-marketing-related subjects such as merchandising, quality management, packing and shipping of products.

  • ShopClues to get aggressive with its marketing activities

    ShopClues to get aggressive with its marketing activities

    MUMBAI: Looks like the Indian e-commerce businesses are speeding towards rapid transformation. While giants like Flipkart and Amazon are busy making announcements about funding, other players in the space are looking at changing their marketing strategies.

     

    ShopClues, an online marketplace has announced the launch of its end-to-end advertising and branding roadmap to gain top-of-the-mind recall in the Indian e-commerce segment.

     

    The brand has already carved a strong niche for itself in the Indian e-tailing space with over 65,000 merchants powering an extensive selection of 5.3 million products across 3000 listing categories.

     

    It is now ready with a full-fledged branding and mass communication campaign to further its penetration and recall in broader geographies and demographics. To achieve this objective, ShopClues has engaged partners across functions to lead its large-scale consumer engagement campaign.

     

    Enormous Brands, headed by advertising veteran, Ashish Khazanchi, has been appointed as its creative partner. The media planning and buying activities have been assigned to Exposure which is headed by Rajul Kulshrestha. The public relations mandate has been assigned to Value 360 Communications, headed by Kunal Kishore Sinha.

     

    A few months back, the platform got on board Shweta Jain as brand strategy consultant to kick start the accelerated mode of branding and advertising initiatives.

     

    ShopClues co-founder & CMO Radhika Ghai Aggarwal said, “We observed early on that our country has millions of small merchants with interesting products and we Indians love to shop in local bazaars. This is the basic and defining essence of our product. At ShopClues, we’ve built properties like the Sunday flea market, wholesale, cash-before-delivery, factory outlet, keeping the orientation of our shoppers and their comfort zones in mind. We have an approach to merchandising which is unprecedented. Our build-up is focused on extensive unstructured products categories, offerings and unique cataloging.”

     

    ShopClues claims to have spent less than US $10 million to reach the status of India’s fifth largest, while every other company in the top five list has spent an over ten times the amount.

     

    While ShopClues covers a broad range of products, prices, categories, brands, and sellers, it specialises in non-standard categories, unbranded products or less-known brands, smaller merchants, and tier II and tier III cities.

     

    Unstructured products account for over 75 per cent of the Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV). It is thus a combination of a discovery and transaction-enabling engine. In addition to strong traction and a very well-developed marketplace ecosystem, it also has an unmatchable cost advantage and rapidly improving fundamentals – the company is close to gross margin break-even and will be operating margin positive by March 2015.