Leading e-commerce player Club Factory has announced the launch of an Instant Messaging Feature on its App – to allow sellers to communicate with customers on Club Factory directly. The new initiative is further aimed to empower local sellers and manufacturers in India. Using the chat feature, sellers can directly take order details via the messaging tool and cater to the customization requirements of their users. Almost 70% sellers on the Club Factory platform have started using this feature to interact and build their customer base directly. These include sellers in Women’s Clothing, Mobiles & Accessories & Home categories.
In addition to its zero-commission model for sellers, Club Factory is not charging sellers for any marketing promotions. Club Factory is promoting qualified sellers by giving them increased exposure, in-depth Big Data trends analysis, end-to-end support and co-marketing campaigns to drive sales.
Talking on the announcement, Mr. Vincent Lou, Founder and CEO, Club Factory said, “Club Factory is the only e-commerce player in India that does not charge any commission fees, passing on cost-benefit to the users. We are also happy to include a chat feature as part of our bouquet of offerings. The option allows customers to directly interact with sellers to discuss any product-related query and place special requests for their orders. Unlike some of the other e-commerce platforms, we believe that sellers need to be empowered to own their consumers and end-users. These initiatives make us a comprehensive online-marketplace facilitator, building to an era of FAC – Flipkart, Amazon and Club Factory to lead the future of e-commerce in India.”
Since its launch in 2016, Club Factory has been working to provide a level-playing field to sellers. It is the only e-commerce player in India that does not charge any commission fee from sellers, allowing them to achieve 20-30 percent cost savings when selling on the Club Factory platform. In addition to that, Club Factory also does not charge any marketing or promotion fee to sellers. Club Factory undertakes promotion of seller stores and designs banners for specific categories on its own accord. Sellers get increased visibility and reach for discounts offered to consumers.
“We have not only exempted sellers from paying any commission charges, but also made it cheaper to sell on our platform with the help of our lower rate of payment gateway and other logistics charges. Our philosophy of not charging any commission from the sellers also enables us to ensure smooth communication between sellers and buyers, which would otherwise be impossible. Any commission fee charged from sellers might hinder them from ethically engaging with buyers as they would try to bypass the platform and offer to directly sell to the buyers, to recover the commission fee charges. Therefore, it won’t be possible to safeguard the consumer’s interest, avoid fraud transactions and ensure a better customer experience if e-commerce players are charging commission fees while also allowing sellers to talk to consumers directly. This initiative from Club Factory is not merely a marketing campaign, but a proof of our dedication to building an ecosystem where SMEs can own their customers. Our goal is to provide a fair marketplace where both the sellers and buyers can benefit”, Vincent added.
Club Factory announced its new scale-up strategy with plans to on-board over 10,000 sellers in 2019. Club Factory has already met the target of on-boarding 10K sellers who joined the platform since the program’s launch. The company opened its Recruitment Programme in India recently for sellers offering products in the lifestyle, fashion, accessories, gadgets and electronics and home categories. Currently, over 70% of the orders on Club Factory are executed by Indian SMEs with a strong focus on products locally made in India.
Club Factory was the world’s most downloaded shopping app on the Google Play Store in the month of September and October 2019, according to Sensor Tower’s Store Intelligence platform. Club Factory has also surpassed Snapdeal to become the 3rd largest shopping app (in terms of MAUs) in India since June 2019 after retaining #1 rank in Google Play Shopping App category (according to data analytics platform App Annie).