Key retailers pump more than Dh52m to rev up sales

Saturday, Oct 03, 2015

Dubai: Power retailers are investing more than Dh52 million at the event to entice buyers with bundles and promotions.

They said that they have very good exclusive bundle offers and promotions to compensate for the fall in sales during the past three to four weeks.

“We are excited about Gitex as sales have been slow during the last one month despite Eid Al Adha,” said Omar Abu Shaban, general manager for Plug Ins.

Plug Ins is investing Dh5 million.

Retailers were not able to draw good sales as expected during the Eid holidays amid Gulf tourists flocking the Emirate.

Nadeem Khanzadah, head of omnichannel retail at Jumbo Group, said that all electronics products sales were down in the past one month as people are waiting for Gitex to open doors. So, Jumbo anticipates good sales to happen at the event to compensate for the last three to four weeks.

All of the exhibitors are betting big on smartphones and laptops to do better than last year.

Jumbo is investing Dh7.35 million.

Deepak Babani, CEO of Eros Group, said that demand for TVs has decreased due to the strong penetration rates of smartphones and tablets. So people are not keen to invest so much on UHD or 4K TVs and 4K content is also not available, apart from the user-created content. Once the 4K content is available, the demand for 4K TVs will increase.

Automation

The smartphone and the TV will become the “main devices for home automation” in the future. When that happens, he said demand for TVs will increase as consumers need to have more than one in a home to monitor.

The investment in Gitex is four times the usual investment in a month, which will be in excess of Dh5 million, he said.

Khanzadah said that TV unit sales may be down but the values are going up as people are migrating to 4K and bigger screen sizes, which mean the average selling price has gone up. The fall in unit sales is getting compensated by higher values.

“TV sales will be good during the shopper due to the promotions. It may struggle later on,” he said.

Abu Shaban expects the laptops segment to do much better. Apple’s Mac books will do much better than last year.

“We expect the new Windows 10 line-up from some vendors to be strong and the i5 and i7 laptops running on older OS are going to break the price floor,” he said.

Abu Shaban said that there are going to be some good offers on TVs as we are partnering with Samsung, LG and Hisense on 50-inch and above models.

Mahesh Chotrani, assistant vice-president of Jacky’s Electronics, said that there is going to be a demand in two-in-one notebooks. Tablets category has been flat so people are looking at not to carry multiple devices now.

“The smartphone is always going to be one prominent device but they cannot to what a notebook can do. We need a notebook now which can do the job of a tablet, so two-in-one is going to be [the] category,” he said.

Laptops

Jacky’s is investing $2.5 (Dh9.18) million.

Neelesh Bhatnagar, CEO of Emax Electronics, said that laptops have been growing for the past one year as tablets have taken a beating. I feel that laptops will be very attractive this year but TV sales have been slow as there isn’t any mega or sporting event to boost the sales.

Emax is spending more than Dh5 million.

Nilesh Khalkho, CEO Sharaf DG, said that they are investing Dh20 million.

“We expect to grow over 30 per cent this year. Smartphones and laptops would lead the growth during this Gitex. Two-in-one convertible laptops contribution is expected to take a lion’s share of business and UHD TVs will grow due to the attractive prices as compared to the Full HD Television segment,” he said.

By Naushad K Cherrayil Staff Reporter