Which one is more viable?

◊ By Rutaksha Rawat

Note: To find organic organic shops and organic product suppliers in India, buy the Organic Directory 

An offline store, if adequately located, could attract steady footfall and lead to robust revenues.

But a good location costs good money unless you already own commercial property in a prime location.

An online store could be a cheaper alternative, but you’d be a small fish in an infinite ocean. How would you even get noticed by consumers?

How much would you need to pump into money-guzzling SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) activities, digital advertisements and so on? And for how long?

Besides, your competitors would be doing the exact same thing—many of them with more resilient pockets than yours.

After all, there are only so many spots on the first few pages of search engines—and now that consumers only use mobile phones—fewer than before.

How long and how much money would it take for you to get to the top of the online totem pole? Would you remain there once you get there? How much money would it take for you to remain there in the ever shifting sands of the Internet, with new and old entrants clamouring for your spot on daily basis?

A successful e-store can become a mirage for some—and has in the past, for many. It’s frighteningly easy to get buried in the graveyard of search results beyond page 10, where ailing URLs go to die.

Below are some pros and cons of both online and offline stores that you may want to consider before deciding which retail format to invest in.

ONLINE STORE

PROS:

• No exorbitant commercial space rental. You can operate your store from the comfort of your home if you like.
• You can keep less staff or only part time staff. You only need to get your deliveries sorted.
• You can keep limited stock without appearing bereft, which you cannot do with an offline store. You don’t even need to stock too many products—it’s really up to you as to how many product categories you wish to keep.
• You need not pay for shop utilities.
• No need not spend on good looking store interiors to draw consumers in.
• Your sales are not subject to time restrictions, pandemic, holidays, etc. You can wake up in the morning and discover that you sold out at night!
• You are not subject to geographical restraints. You can dispatch your products to other states.

CONS:

• You have much more competition because you are now competing with hundreds if not thousands of e-commerce stores in the country as opposed to a brick and mortar store, wherein you only compete with outlets in your vicinity.
• You now need virtual footfall for which you will need to engage the services of an SEO expert/team. The future of your e-store now lies in the hands of this person/firm. The bills may be at par or more than what you would have paid in rent, depending on the quality/reputation of the firm engaged, and let us assume you’re going to opt for the best. Furthermore, unlike in physical stores, where once you gain repute, you can stop aggressive marketing, an online store can never expect to get off the marketing treadmill. So, this is a perennial cost—and one that will escalate with market rates.
• You need to pay a percentage of sales to the payment gateway you use.
• Deliveries can be tricky. Expect more than a few headaches here.
• Packaging costs have now been added. And with the current consumer sentiment against plastic, you would need to opt for an eco-friendly alternative, which may or may not be budget friendly.
• Add courier charges to your expend.
• As far as customers are concerned, if you are not visible, you do not exist. Period.

OFFLINE STORE

PROS:

• If you have managed to acquire a location that enjoys robust footfall from the correct target audience, and you also have a good range of products, you will receive regular walk-ins and consequent sales.
• You do not need to pay for SEO and other online marketing. You do not need a website. You only need to make your social media pages, which you can update intermittently. Initially, you would need to do a bit of marketing via print pamphlets in your area, but this can stop once your store is established.
• As offline stores are dependent on geography, over time, you will likely build a regular customerbase, which will become accustomed to frequenting your store for their organic product needs.
• You will receive real time feedback from consumers, which can help tweak your offerings range sooner.
• You start making revenue as soon as you put up the ‘Open’ sign. There is no waiting around for search engines to propel you into online prominence.

CONS:

• If you don’t own commercial space, you would need to pay high rent for a good location, subject to the whims of your landlord/rent agreement.
• You will need to pay for utilities and staff, and store interiors.
• In case your store is not favourably placed, and does not receive regular traffic, your store would struggle tremendously and may not survive.
• You cannot get away with stocking the bare minimum because people will be able to see the dearth and would be discouraged to shop at your store. Therefore, you will need to stock your store amply in order to attract consumers. This could lead to wastage of food items if they’re not sold on time.
• Your sales are subject to time restrictions/pandemic/holidays, etc. You can only sell during open hours.

VERDICT—WHICH IS MORE VIABLE?

The Altitude Store in New Delhi started out with one offline retail store in Meharchand Market. It followed it up with an e-store,

www.thealtitudestore.com , to cater for regular customers and went on to expand to 4 more brick and mortar outlets across Delhi NCR. It now also sells its own produce and value added products in its store, procured from its own organic farms in Uttarakhand.

But this has been a decade-long endeavour. The flagship store opened its doors in 2010. All 5 of Altitude Store’s properties are rented and all are in prime locations (Asian Games Village, Vasant Vihar, Shanti Niketan, Greater Noida and Meharchand Market). Clearly, the offline store-first model has worked well for the proprietor, Ayesha Grewal.

10 years have allowed The Altitude Store to endear itself to its customerbase and it does not depend on SEO tactics to push its e-store forward, as is evident from its absence from the foremost search pages online. The orders come in like clockwork from regulars.

For organic e-tailer, Live Organic, the opposite has proved to be true. Proprietors Gagandeep Singh and Manpreet Bajaj started their self-owned offline retail store in Gurugram in 2010 and launched their e-store, www.liveorganic.co.in the following year.

According to the owners, a majority of their revenue comes not from the physical store but from their website, which happens to be on Page 1 of Google under the search, ‘Organic Shop Delhi’ (as of August 22, 2020).

This feat has been achieved by maintaining an inhouse SEO team whose sole purpose is to ensure upper-echelon status for Live Organic on Google.

The efforts are paying off. Bajaj shares they fulfil roughly 500 orders per month through the website alone.

They now also offer organic products under their native organic food brand, Live Organic.

Biomart.in, which is owned by the organic food company, Brahm Arpan Organic Pvt Ltd, was launched in 2017 and is enjoying prominence among the online organic stores in India currently.

The company spends anywhere from Rs 1 lac to Rs 20,000 per month on its SEO activities, which it outsources to an army of SEO experts.

In its first year of operation, Biomart was injecting Rs 1 lac into SEO per month. The e-store sells products of several brands besides its inhouse organic brand, Health Fields, and currently clocks Rs 10 lac in revenue per month.

Therefore, both offline retail stores and e-commerce stores can be successful and can eventually lead to the retailer expanding by way of a native brand, additional stores, purchase of farms, export, etc.

If you’ve managed to secure a great location with assured footfall, the less nerve-racking option would be to open a physical store.

Then, once you’ve established a customerbase, follow it up with the launch of an eponymous e-commerce store to cater for regular customers, thereby avoiding being at the mercy of search engines.

But if you do not have a good location in hand and no means of acquiring one, opt for an e-store, set aside a healthy sum for marketing, and hunker down for the SEO battlefield.

Indefinitely.

To contact suppliers of authentic organic products for your organic retail store, please write in at [email protected]

&

To register as an organic product supplier also, please write in at [email protected]

ALSO READ:

8 Things Not To Do If You’re Starting An Organic Store

What All To Stock In Your New Organic Store