I am a regular visitor of smartcompany.com.au, I saw an article called “Why online retailing is a dead-end: Gerry Harvey” the other day, quite a starement from Gerry, isn’t it? A lot people has reacted strongly against what Gerry has claimed, feedbacks flew in expressing that maybe Gerry is too old to understand what online is all about.
Think about it again, maybe Gerry do have the resource to make such a statement. Australia has a relatively small market, distribution channels sometimes do have a lot of power over the suppliers, especially over the major brands. With Harvey Norman in its current size, it can easily put pressure over suppliers, not allowing them to sell cheap to other small operators, especially the ones that are selling online. With such power, it’s understandable that Gerry can make such a statement. But for small operators, who are selling or are going to sell online. What can we do to avoid the channel pressure then? One way I thought of is finding a place online where we can sell anonymously.
This is one of the reasons why on OfferMe, until the deal is done, seller’s ID is hidden to they buyers, the offer does not show to people who is not interested in buying. So if sellers do have something in stock that need to cleared, they can sell any price they want on OfferMe, they don’t have to worry about damaging their hard building brand value or the price tag they have put up in their stores, which is a majar problem a retailer will face when selling the same product online at the same time.
James
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