E-commerce marketplace ShopClues has introduced a new wholesale section on its site, enabling users to purchase products in bulk at wholesale prices. The focus here seems to be bulk buyers or small retailers who typically source products from wholesale retailers and sell them in their respective local markets. Through this platform, wholesale retailers essentially get an opportunity to offer their products for bulk online purchase without worrying about fulfilment and logistics while small retailers possibly get a better range of products. Note that there are B2B marketplaces like IndiaMART and TradeIndia already, however these primarily works on a listing based model and doesn't facilitate the entire transaction, which ShopClues seems to be addressing through this initiative. The company says this platform will allow wholesale merchants to offer products through their own branded online storefront while ShopClues will act as a facilitator by taking care of the technology, marketing, merchandizing, cataloguing, payment, fulfilment and customers support services. All products bought and sold are also covered by ShopClues’ buyer protection policy. Wholesale Product Formats & Pricing The site currently offers whole sale products through two formats - minimum order quantity and fixed lot. With minimum order quality format, buyers will have to purchase a minimum number of products set by the merchant or higher. The minimum order quantity is 10 by default and ShopClues says it doesn't allow merchants to go below 10, however we did notice products listings where the product limit is set lower. For instance, Nokia Lumia smartphones have a limit of 3 smartphones…
