Employees in around 1,000 conventional durable outlets in God?s own country have much to celebrate this Onam – a festival of plenty. Many of them are being poached at huge salaries by durable majors and big retailers setting up shop there.
Says Jose Ponnezhath of the Dealers Association of Kerala (DAK), ?Videocon Industries, which is expanding its ?Next? outlets in Kerala from 8 to 15, is luring experienced employees from conventional retail chains by offering more perks. Similarly, Big Bazaar, which is expanding its stores from 3 to 15, too, has started offering Rs 15,000 as an average salary to employees, as compared to Rs 10,000 which they are currently drawing.?
Vivek?s, a prominent Chennai-based dealer which has a shop in Alapuzha too is poaching employees from existing conventional retail outlets. As a result, about 1,000 retail chains in Kerala are objecting to durable companies? move to set up outlets. They are also trying to retain their employees by hiking their salaries, apart from giving their salesmen more training by enrolling them at training institutes set up by DAK. ?We hope this Onam to contribute 30% to durables sales over the previous Onam,? Ponnezhath added.
In order to cash in on the festival, consumer durable majors across the country have started meeting dealers based in Kerala to launch new consumer promotions.
Although last year?s Onam schemes consisted of scratch card schemes and freebies, extended warranties were done away with, as companies came under fire for failing to keep up with their promises in Onam. ?As a result, in volume terms, we had sold only 60% of the sales targets in 2006,? Ponnezhath added.
The second quarter of the calendar 2007 has witnessed a decline in durable sales in Kerala owing to the chikunguniya epidemic.
