The meeting of OLS committee members of Confed-ITA with few vendors was held on 20-11-2014 at Hotel Fortune Pandian, Madurai headed by Muthiah Pillai as the chairman.
The other OLS committee members who attended the meeting were Suresh of CITA (Coimbatore), Arumugam of VAIT (Vellore), Manikandan of ACCT (Trichy), Selvaraj of CAMS (Madurai), Jegan of CAMS (Madurai), Balaji of Sneham (Chennai).
The vendors who participated in the meeting were Ganesh Selvaraj-SRGM (South & Srilanka), Lenovo India, Ravi Kumar-Regional Sales Manager TN, Acer India, Joseph-Territory TN, Dell, Ram Prasad-Director (South & West) Epson India, Sairam- Epson (TN & Srilanka), Brillate Lin-Asus India, Suganth-HP (South India), Ganesh Kumar-Senior Manager, CPSD, Canon India, Sriram-Toshiba, Bipin Roy-VP, K7.
The Chairman of OLS Committee Muthiah Pillai briefed about Confed-ITA and its activities and also presented a PPT about the present scenario on online sales and the impact on channels. Finally after the discussion with vendors the meeting was concluded with following points:
On discussion with Lenovo:-
a) Lenovo accepted to come out with two differentiated category of products for online and offline Distribution.
b) They also accepted to appoint authorized market place partners to deal with e-commerce portals and will have control on MOP
c) Lenovo accepted to appoint a third party monitoring agency to track any kind of online sales violations and take corrective measured along with associations.
On discussion with Dell:-
a) Dell accepted to control on online market place by appointing their Authorised partners.
b) In terms of warranty Dell has clarified as per law it cannot be denied to any consumer.
On discussion with Acer:-
a) Acer assured that they do not deal with any of the E-Commerce companies.
b) They informed that they have internal mechanism to track and control the misappropriate pricing.
c) They also confirmed that they have already initiated process of snickering for nationwide shipments.
On discussion with HP:-
a) HP Claimed that they have official tie up with Flipkart and WS Retail with proper MOU in place and in case of any price parity in Flipkart they have immediate corrective mechanism in place.
b) They assured that they have already initiated the process of directly engaging with other online e commerce company’s Snapdeal and Amazon to streamline market place. Talks are ON.
On discussion with Toshiba:-
a) Toshiba confirmed that there is no engagement with online portals. Moreover, they will move in to commercial business segments with aligned partners.
On discussion with Asus:-
a) Asus confirmed that there is no direct engagement with online portals in respective IT Products. Whenever MOP violations happen they buy themselves Asus product and takes action by way of cutting down back ends and incentives.
On discussion with Epson:-
a) Epson assured to extend all kind of support to the association against any of the partners those who are indulging in online sales.
On discussion with Canon:-
a) Canon confirmed from September 2014 onwards they have engaged with WS Retails for B2C – Inkjets business with exclusive models. They are not authorizing Laser printers to sell thru online sales. They have collected more than 200 data nationwide by their internal tracking system towards violation of online sales from T1 & T2 which they are ready to share with the respective associations.