Club Factory attracts Indian sellers by waiving off marketing fee

Chinese e-tailer Club Factory has waived off its marketing fee for sellers in a bid to attract Indian sellers from established platforms like Amazon and Flipkart,. This could reduce cost of selling for domestic sellers on the Chinese platform by 20-30 per cent. Further, it has also asked sellers to share details of their Amazon inventory so that it could fetch information directly from the online links to list the products on Club Factory.

Club Factory, is now seeing more Indian sellers joining the company’s platform owing to the policy changes, industry sources said. This comes at a time when Amazon revised its seller policy, which would see the cost of selling going up for local sellers in multiple categories. This also marks Club Factory’s effort to widen its base of Indian sellers after it was subjected to regulatory scrutiny for tax evasion, among other issues. The company now also offers cash-on-delivery to consumers on a subscription-based policy. Its shipment volumes had gone down significantly after tighter regulatory scrutiny but that might change with domestic sellers joining the platform.

Club Factory, like other Chinese platforms such as Shein, largely caters to the unbranded products category selling across fashion goods and accessories at low prices. This, before local sellers joined the platform, made it hard to compete with Chinese rivals. Pricing disparity was a major reason that led Indian traders to protest Chinese sellers here.