Key Points
New Delhi: Smartphone brands such as Xiaomi and Realme are cracking down on scalper retailers looking to make a quick buck by selling devices cheaper on online platforms as the companies bet big on the offline channel to boost growth in the world's second-largest smartphone market...
After complaints from retailer associations, brands including Xiaomi and Realme are repurchasing stocks selling at lower prices to trace back the retailer and distributor and penalise them, according to correspondence between the two parties ET has seen...
For now, brands are letting retailers go with a warning, making them sign an undertaking that prohibits them from selling their products outside the authorised channels to avoid higher liquidation damage and loss of business..
The association has seen over a dozen products from brands such as Xiaomi, Realme and Samsung being sold at prices on online channels that are around 1,000-2,000 lower than their minimum operating prices (MOP)...
"This is a real alarming situation to hear that a brand has allowed the ecommerce platforms to register retailers online, majorly wholesalers, to sell their products just to gain share but actually losing the ground and faith of the mainline retailers who have been putting hard efforts to sell product to the consumers with best of their abilities," the retailer association said in a letter to Realme on March 26..
