Unlocking secrets Of Ahmedabad-based ShethOpticals On How Eye Retailers Can Counter Heat From Online Competitors

Meet AshwinSheth of ShethOpticals – Ahmedabad, whose eyewear store has been a leading retailer for the last 43+ years. For someone who has been in business when even landline phones were a luxury to sailing through current times when everyone is majorly hooked to their mobile phones all the time would surely have interesting stories to tell about their business success.

In a fast-changing world, where the competition is getting endless, and online sites add up more to the heat, it becomes more than important to understand the business mantras to firmly hold up the ground. When asked Ashwinbhai about his survival-to-success journey, here’s what he had to say, “Last 10 years have been a game changer for eyewear retailers. Those who are not adopting newer practices can get left behind like the majority of people are hooked all the time digitally. So in spite of ShethOpticals being offline-only retailer stores, we still spend most of our budgets across online platforms to capture our prospect’s attention. Secondly, pure or hybrid online sellers in the eyewear segment may try to woo customers with deep discounting. An offline retailer may need to work hard to offer personalized services because there are some areas that can be difficult to be replaced, like the ‘Try & Buy’ option and thorough ‘Eye-Testing by qualified Optometrist’ at stores. Thankfully, we at ShethOpticals have a loyal customer following that won’t get carried away by those sales promotion gimmicks. Also, a lot of them are well aware that quality comes at a cost, and so it’s always advisable to opt for trustworthy retailers only.”

Also, looking at the ongoing market conditions, the secret to survival may be in having the right patience and a ray of hope that all those customers who might have flipped their loyalty from offline stores to online sites may require to switch back to the day when all these online players start getting exhausted with discounting. The reason is bleeding company money for a longer duration for aggressive customer acquisition cannot be a long-term business functional strategy. 

Taking along the legacy setup by Ashwinbhai is his dynamic son JishnuSheth who is fast scaling up with the NRI outreach program as the cost of the same eyewear compared between an overseas location and India does differ significantly. 

For every eyewear retailer struggling to cope with the hard times, ShethOpticals is something that they can look up to with respect and pride.