Mobile phones and accessories

The trade

How this trade really works

From the factory to the customer, each person in the chain wants something different. Most of what goes wrong comes from the gaps between them.

The company

Designs or brings in the phones, chargers, earphones, cables, covers and power banks. It sets the price, plans the launches and pushes stock out to distributors before each month closes. It wants its models in every shop window before a rival's new model arrives.

The distributor

Holds the company's stock for a district or a group of towns. He pays in advance or on short credit, then gives the shops credit himself. He wants the scheme money from the company, fast-moving models, and no old stock left on the day the price falls.

The retailer or showroom

Sells to the customer across the counter. He keeps a demo piece of each model, a small stock of the colours he thinks will sell, and a wall of accessories. He pushes whichever brand gives him the best margin and the best incentive for his staff this month.

The company's promoter in the shop

Some shops have a person in the company's uniform who stands at the counter and talks customers into your model. He is paid by you but stands in someone else's shop, and he reports what he hears, not what is sold.

The customer

Has already seen the phone online, read the reviews and checked the online price. He walks into the shop to touch the phone, ask for a better price, buy on monthly instalments, or get a free cover and screen guard thrown in.

The month-end push fills godowns, not pockets

Every company wants a strong close to the month. So the last week brings a scheme: take this much stock, get this much back. The distributor takes it to earn the scheme. Your books show a strong month. But the phones have only moved from your godown to his. Next month, he orders less, because he is still selling what you pushed.

A launch makes the old model cheaper overnight

The day your new model is announced, every shop knows the old one must come down. Customers know it too. They stop buying the old model and wait. A distributor holding a large stock of the old model now has goods worth less than he paid. He will not sit quietly. He will ask you to make up the loss.

When you cut the price, you pay for every phone still in the market

When a company drops the price of a model, it usually pays the distributor the difference on the phones he still holds. Often the shop is paid too. That money comes straight out of your margin. And the amount depends entirely on how many phones are lying out there on that day. If you do not know that number yourself, you pay whatever claim is sent to you.

Colour and memory decide what sells, not the model name

A model is never one item. It comes in several colours and several memory sizes. Usually the customer wants the popular colour in the middle memory size. The loud colour and the biggest memory sit. Your sales report says the model sold well. The distributor knows he is stuck with the colours nobody asked for.

Accessories move faster and quietly carry the profit

Chargers, cables, earphones, covers, screen guards and power banks sell every day, in every shop, without a launch. A distributor who handles both phones and accessories often earns more peace of mind from the accessories. If your accessories run short in a town, the shop simply puts a cheaper unbranded charger on the hook. You lose the sale and never hear about it.

Online sale days pull the price floor from under the shop

When a phone is sold online cheaper than the shop's buying price, the shop stops recommending it. He is not being difficult. He cannot sell at a loss and he cannot argue with the customer's phone screen. So your model stays in the glass case and the shopkeeper points at another brand.

Stock crosses borders between distributors

A distributor who took too much stock to earn a scheme will sell it cheap to a dealer in another distributor's area. The other distributor then complains that your price in his town has collapsed. Both are protecting their own money. Neither is lying. You only find out after the damage is done.

Where the money quietly goes

What you cannot see today, and what it costs you

How many old-model phones are out there on launch day

You know what you billed to each distributor. You do not know what he has sold since. So on the day you cut the price, the claim for the price difference arrives on paper, and you have nothing of your own to check it against. You either pay it or argue. Either way, it costs you.

Which colours and memory sizes are stuck

Your plan for the next batch is built on what you shipped, not on what customers took home. So you make the same colour mix again. The slow colours pile up a little more every time, and they only clear when you cut the price.

Which towns are really buying

A distributor in one district may look strong because he takes every scheme. Another looks weak because he orders carefully. Without seeing what each one actually sold, you reward the one who fills his godown and push the one who sells honestly.

Whether your accessories are on the hook or missing

A charger that runs out in a district does not raise an alarm. Your accessory sales just look a little soft that month. Meanwhile shops have filled the gap with cheaper unbranded pieces, and some of those customers never come back to your brand.

How long the stock has been sitting

A phone that has been lying with a distributor for a few weeks is fine. A phone that has been lying for many months, with a new model due, is a loss already made. Your reports cannot tell these apart. Both look like the same number of phones billed.

A season, the way it usually goes

The story you already know

It is the middle of the festive season in Lucknow. The company's regional head looks at the month's billing and feels good. Every distributor in Uttar Pradesh took the scheme. The godowns are full of the model that was launched before the monsoon.

Then the head office announces the new model for the week before Diwali. The old one will drop in price on the same day. Within a few days the claims start arriving. One distributor in Kanpur says he holds a large stock of the old model in the loud colour. A distributor in Gorakhpur says the same. Nobody in the regional office can say whether those figures are true. They have only the distributor's word and their own billing from months ago.

The company pays most of the claims to keep the distributors calm before Diwali. Then it discovers that the Kanpur distributor had already sold a good part of that stock cheaply to dealers in Varanasi. Meanwhile, the new model is short in the towns where it would have sold fastest, because the trucks went to the godowns that shouted loudest. The festive season ends with full books and a thin profit.

What you can now decide

Decisions you could not make before

Plan the price cut around real stock

Before you announce a lower price, look at how much of the old model each distributor still holds. If the market is heavy, you can push the old model harder for a few weeks before the cut. If it is light, you cut sooner and pay less. Either way, when claims arrive, you have your own figure beside theirs.

Make the next batch in the colours people actually take

See which colours and memory sizes left the distributor's shelf and which stayed. Change the mix for the next production order. The slow colour is made in smaller numbers or not at all. That is a price cut you never have to give.

Send new models where the old one sold out

On launch day, a distributor who has cleared the old model is ready to sell the new one. A distributor still sitting on old stock will push that first. Send the launch stock to the godowns that are empty and the shops that are asking, not to the ones that order loudest.

Stop schemes that only fill godowns

Compare what a scheme made distributors take with what they sold in the weeks after. If the stock just sat, the scheme bought you a good month-end and nothing more. You can design the next scheme to pay on what moves out of the distributor's godown, because now you can see it.

Keep accessories on the hook

When a fast charger or a popular cable starts running low with a distributor, you see it before the shop fills the gap with someone else's product. Send the stock, or ask the distributor to reorder, while the customer is still asking for your brand.

Move stock between distributors before you cut the price

One distributor has the popular colour sitting while the next district is short of it. Move it across, with the distributor's agreement, before you reach for a discount. The phone sells at the full price in a town that wants it.

Where you get ahead

Where your competitor keeps losing

You pay less on every price cut

Brands that know how much stock is in the market on launch day can time the cut and check every claim. Over a year of launches, that is the difference between a brand that earns and a brand that just keeps busy.

Distributors prefer the brand that does not overload them

A distributor carries several brands. He remembers which one made him sit on old stock before a launch. If you send stock where it sells and hold back where it does not, he gives your models the better shelf and his best attention.

You launch into empty shelves, not crowded ones

A rival who does not know his market launches into godowns still full of his last model. His distributors push the old one, and his new model starts slow. You launch where the old model has already gone, and your new phone gets the counter on day one of its life.

The same season, with Vyavora

The story, told again

The same festive season in Lucknow. This time, every distributor in Uttar Pradesh bills on his own Vyavora, which the company set up and pays for. The regional head opens his screen in the morning. He sees how many of the old model each distributor still has, in each colour.

Kanpur is heavy in the loud colour. Gorakhpur has almost none left. Before the new model is announced, the company runs a small push in Kanpur and moves some of the loud colour to Prayagraj, where shops are asking for it. When the price cut comes, the claims arrive as before. This time the company checks each one against what the distributor's own billing shows on that day. Most match. The few that do not are settled quietly with a phone call.

The new model goes first to Gorakhpur and the towns that cleared the old one. Chargers and covers for it are already in those godowns. The regional head notices that a scheme from the summer moved stock into godowns but not out of them, and drops it for next year. The festive season ends with thinner claims, a cleaner market, and distributors who answer his calls.

Why the others agree to it

Everyone in the chain is better off

For the distributor

He gets a full Vyavora for his own business, usually paid for by you. It has GST billing, stock, a billing counter and accounts. It shows what each shop owes him and sends WhatsApp messages to his shops. Your price list arrives on its own and stays current, so he never bills at last month's price after a cut. You see only your own goods with him. You never see his other brands, his margins, his purchase prices, his shop list, his expenses or his bank balance. That line is why distributors agree to join.

For the shop

A shop that bills on Vyavora gets stock, billing and GST for its own counter. Colour and memory size are picked at the counter, so the right piece is billed. Billing continues when the internet drops. When a price falls, the shop has its own clear record of how many old pieces it held that day, which makes its own claim easy to support.

What this does not do

Vyavora shows your goods with distributors who bill on Vyavora, and goes one step further only where the shop also bills on it. It cannot see into a distributor's old software, and it does not buy data from anyone. It does not track individual handsets, repairs or replacements. It does not tell you what will sell next season. It shows you, clearly and as it happens, what has sold and what is still sitting, so that you make the call yourself. It does not calculate price-drop claims for you, but it gives you the stock figures to check them.

Straight answers

Questions people in this trade ask

Will my distributors really agree to bill on software the company gave them?

Most worry that the company will see everything. With Vyavora you see only your own goods. His other brands, his profit, his customers and his bank stay his. When that is explained plainly, and when he gets a full billing and accounts system without paying for it, most agree.

Can I see stock with the shops, not just the distributors?

Only where the shop also bills on Vyavora. For those shops you see what left their counter. For shops that do not, you see what the distributor sold to them.

Does it handle colours and memory sizes separately?

Yes. Each colour and memory size is its own item, so you see which ones move and which sit, distributor by distributor.

Will it work out the money I owe distributors when I cut a price?

No, it does not prepare the claim. It shows you exactly how many of the old model each distributor held on that day. You and your accounts team use that to check the claim and settle it.

Our distributors keep old records in Excel. Do they have to type everything again?

No. Vyavora reads the Excel and PDF files they already keep, so their past stock and customer details come in without retyping.

A phone in a distributor's godown is not a sale. It is a price cut waiting to happen.