Eid shopping online doubles

The volume of online Eid shopping has more than doubled this year compared to the previous year's, with many opting to buy products online to avoid nagging traffic jam and mad rush at shopping malls.

More than 20,000 purchases a day are being made on the country's e-commerce market during this Ramadan against 10,000 last year, according to market insiders.

E-traders are likely to see sales of more than Tk 200 crore till this Eid-ul-Fitr. The amount was around Tk 100 crore last year, Fahim Mashroor, convener of E-Commerce Alliance at Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), told The Daily Star.

Razib Ahmed, president of the e-Commerce Association of Bangladesh, said “I have talked to more than 40 e-commerce companies. All of them said they were now doing better than in the previous year.”

He noted that accurate figures on online sales are hard to come by as most of the payments are made in cash upon delivery of products.

According to the World Bank, Bangladesh recorded retail sales of $10-12 billion (Tk 77,350 crore to Tk 92,820 crore) during the two Eid festivals in a span of three months in 2014.

Riding on the rapid growth of the internet and mobile phone use across the country, around 500 e-commerce sites and more than 3,000 Facebook-based traders are now selling goods online.

As most of the e-commerce sites are based on Facebook, advertisements for products on the popular social networking site have also gone up in recent times.

Mostly youths and job holders have set in motion the online shopping culture in the country. For Sadia Sharmin, a mid-level executive of a Dhaka-based corporate firm, troublesome Eid shopping has now become a matter of minutes.

As in the last two years, she did most of her Eid shopping through e-commerce, much ahead of the festival. This time, she bought salwar-kameez and a sari for herself, dresses for her kids and also salwar-kameez for her maid.

“I prefer this platform for shopping because it saves me the trouble of getting stuck in tailbacks for hours and haggling with sellers over price,” she said. She, however, admitted that she missed the excitement of Eid shopping at malls and markets.

“It is quite exciting to shop at markets or malls but I have time constraint,” said Sadia, who receives most of the purchased goods at her office in Tejgaon. Not only shoppers across the country, non-resident Bangladeshis are also doing Eid shopping for their loved ones back home through online stores of the country's leading brands.

Humayun Kabir, a non-resident Bangladeshi in Italy, has already done Eid shopping for his family by placing orders on Aarong, a leading lifestyle retailer in the country.

He bought saris for his mother, panjabi for his father and fashionable dresses for his younger brother and sister. Much to his delight, Aarong has already sent the items to his hometown of Gopalganj.

“E-commerce platform gives us the opportunity to do shopping even from Europe for my family members in Bangladesh,” Kabir told The Daily Star over the phone from Bolzano in northern Italy.

Aarong and several other reputed brands said half of their orders came from non-resident Bangladeshis, and this is the specialty of this year's Eid shopping on the e-commerce platform.

“I am quite surprised to see that more than 50 percent of our online orders have been placed from abroad ahead of this year's Eid,” said Mohammad Abdur Rouf, chief operating officer of Aarong.

Sabera Anwar, chief executive officer of Panache Events that sells high-end dresses, said more than 30 percent of their buyers are non-resident Bangladeshis. Of the rest, most are from Dhaka, she added.

Rouf said their total online sales more than doubled ahead of this Eid compared to last year's. “It means people are becoming habituated to online purchase. We hope it will increase further next year.”

Aarong is offering promotional packages such as air tickets to Myanmar for its top online buyer.

Like Aarong, several other companies are making promotional offers, including cash-back, to boost sales. Multinational companies are also making foray into the local e-commerce market to grab a fair share of the pie and strengthen their presence in Bangladesh.

Global footwear brand Bata initiated its e-commerce sales through online marketplaces ajkerdeal.com and daraz.com.bd last year. Some local and foreign companies have also rolled out their online stores in the last two months.

Despite offering hassle-free and time-saving shopping experience, e-commerce is not completely unproblematic. At times, shoppers complain about the quality of products purchased online.

Fahmida Alauddin, a student at a university in Dhanmondi, has mixed experience about online shopping. Recently, she bought a pair of sunglasses for Tk 800 from an online store, which delivered the products a day after she placed the order. The products were fine, she said.

Later, she bought salwar-kameez from another e-shop but their colour faded after she washed them. Fahim of the BASIS said the industry was still fighting fraudulence, and it would take time to achieve full confidence of customers.

Fahim, also the CEO of renowned online shop ajkerdeal.com, said his company gives customers the chance to change their purchased products if those are defective. 

“To avoid fake products, customers should buy from credible e-shops.”

Online stores have to improve the quality of their products and services to become an alternative to bricks-and-mortar stores, he added.