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Diwali discounts galore
It is Diwali time and discount time for the textile
industry. Traders are vying with one another in offering the maximum possible
discounts. It has been found that the textile industry often does better business
with discounts.
The hard reality is that when manufacturing companies
advertise new designer wear, the people regard them as exclusive wears and avoid
them, firmly believing that they are expensive. On the contrary, when discount
sales are offered in the guise of Diwali celebrations, people rush to buy them
unmindful of the genuineness of the discounts or the quality of the discounted
products. Now discounts come in various forms. Cash discounts, discounts on
purchases with credit cards as also discount coupons for further purchase are
some well known ways. And traders offering free gifts when some clothes are
bought is equally popular. So much so, there was a cartoon in a newspaper the
other day of a lady enquiring of the salesperson: ‘Forget the product,
tell me what I get free if I buy these products.”
Vernacular newspapers are more vocal about the discounts
the textile merchants offer. Almost all the shops in Coimbatore and Tirupur,
for instance, have now offered up to 50 per cent discount for purchase of various
textile materials. Usually ‘50 per cent’ is printed in colour and
bold while in small letters, there would be the words, ‘up to’. Thereafter,
inside the shop, one comes across various levels of discounts usually 10 to
20 per cent for different textile materials. Fifty per cent discount is normally
not there and is well understood too — how could a trader offer the same
products for just half the usual price? Other non-genuine discount forms in
trade are jacking up the price before and now offering the discount so as to
make up the loss. The other day, a consumer organisation filed a suit in court
against a textile chain holding that it was cheating the consumers with wrong
claims as the prices had been jacked up by 50 per cent and now, a discount of
30 per cent is offered with a cushion for another five per cent discount when
the consumers insist. Some textile majors like Reliance have issued discount
coupons to their share holders which are encashable against the purchase of
some select brands from specific dealers. Whatever it be, Diwali means discounts
for textile business. And, newspapers, particularly, the vernacular ones, are
full of colourful advertisements showing models wearing whatever is claimed
to be the new designs.
How useful is it for the trader to advertise? A doctor
from Coonoor the other day drove down to Coimbatore — some 200 km up and
down — with his family just to purchase some textile items from a shop
whose advertisements the family had seen in a Tamil newspaper. “We are
not totally pleased with the selections because the salespersons contended different
discount rates for the products to our surprise, but we should admit that we
did make some useful purchases, thanks to the advertisements,” the doctor
told this columnist. And, some shops advise the customers to bring a cutting
of the advertisements from the newspaper itself and claim a five per cent off
on the purchases over and above the announced discounts.
“Partially, this helps us to evaluate which newspapers
fetch us better returns for our ads. Partially, it makes us feel that the customers
have read the various claims we have made in the ad,” said the manager
of a shop which had advertised similarly.
Now, in Chennai, the pattern is to keep together 1.20
metres of pant length and 2.25 metres of shirt length matching to each other
and offer the set for sale at Rs 125. The materials are good and the response
is encouraging. A shopowner in Permabur, Chennai told this columnist that he
had been selling quite a lot of such pieces everyday since mid-September as
the people found it easier to match and cheaper as well. “Now, the customers
take a lesser time to purchase a pant and shirt length. Also, even if he had
come to buy only a pant length, he would, because of this combination, go for
the shirt as well. Collectively, this gives us good business,” he said.
Most of such purchases meet the festival gift requirement.
The government-run Co-optex is also offering 20 to
30 per cent discounts. These discounts are generally regarded to be genuine
because of the role of the government, but the salespersons lack professionalism.
In Permabur, recently this columnist could not buy useful materials from the
large Co-optex showroom because of the absence of attractive varieties and the
presence of less-informed and less cooperative sales persons. Textile shops
in Tirupur are also adopting techniques to woo customers for purchasing gift
sets. Renuka Textiles and Readymades, for instance, is advertising gift sets
for Rs 150 onwards. White House and The Chennai Silks have announced separate
counters for the employers to buy gift textile articles for distribution to
their employees.
“Gift these along with bonus for this Diwali says
an advertisement of White House. In such gift sections, one could pick up shirting
and suit lengths, cutpieces, sarees, blouses, etc. If discounts are the order
of the day, the need of the hour is innovation. That’s where some textile
shops excel.
- P S Sundar
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