Shopping on Quikr

Oct 22, 2014

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One of my all-time favourite cinematic moments is when Julia Roberts as the feisty, warm hearted hooker Vivian goes shopping for a wardrobe on Rodeo Drive and comes out happily swinging her bag and stepping into the first store that turned away and telling the frosty, snotty sales girl that turning her away before was a huge mistake .Oooh……how I just love that scene!

Shoppers will easily identify with this situation because there are always instances when one enters a shop hesitantly or even with trepidation. I remember once entering a swanky men’s store in Milan, minutes away to closing time, looking distinctly ratty after a hot, tiring day traveling, hair askew, make up long vanished, and with a baby with baby in tow expecting fully well to be turned away only to be surprised by the warm welcome given to me by the poshly dressed salesmen who were perhaps only too gobsmacked to react any other way!

Part of the experience of shopping is not only looking for products but also the reaction of the salesmen who attend to you. I am not a great spender but I am a great shopper and love scouting around different markets for all kinds of wares – crockery, cutlery, clothes, beauty products, household goods and even the daily vegetables and fruit!

So I am not really a fan of online shopping though I do find it convenient for buying regular branded household groceries that I shop for on bigbasket.com or localbanya.com.

The competition

But I am a great sucker for competitions and contests. I am also a great sucker for deals and shopping. So when Blogadda announced a unique campaign that required you to shop on Quikr.com , I quickly enrolled myself and was one of the lucky ones to be invited to participate in this great shopping experience.The deal was that a blogger had to buy products worth Rs. 5000 from Quikr and blog about the experience. That didn’t seem to hard to do because with the festive season around, there is always a need to buy things and if one can buy it from the comfort of one’s home, it is even better.

The experience

After getting over the disappointment of finding out that Quikr was some kind of an online jumble sale I thought I’d still give it a shot as there were always things that I could buy as gifts.

After a few minutes of random clicking, I realised that there is a method to shopping on Quikr.com

Step 1 – Choose the city you live in so that the geographical location is determined
Step 2 – Choose the category of goods you are interested in
Step 3- Set filters like product, brand, price
Step 4 – Identify the product you want to buy and contact the dealer.

I realised that one has to choose filters to avoid random clicks and wasting time looking for something to buy. I wasn’t interested in most of the categories ( I mean can you even buy a house for Rs. 5000 anywhere in India leave alone Mumbai?)

So with most categories being eliminated by the process of Natural Selection, I zeroed down to Home & Lifestyle.

In the Baby Infant Products that I was kind of interested in being a full time granny to an over active toddler, I thought I’d get something – but sadly there’s nothing interesting. Some used prams, unheard of brands of diapers and basically nothing I found even remotely tempting.

I then went down to the next attractive sub-category Health Beauty Products since I was on the lookout for a BB Cream. Sadly this too was a waste of time as the cream I wanted wasn’t even listed and the rest of the items seemed too dodgy for me…..I mean imagine getting L’Oreal lipsticks or Herbalife slimming powders from an unidentified source?

Household goods are always useful especially mixers and toasters which I could gift to Anna Shetty but sadly I couldn’t find these here either! There were no Oven Toaster Grills, nor were there any decent branded mixers.

But wait, something did catch my eye – a ROTI MAKER. How cool was that? Ever since I’d heard about Rotimatic a new gizmo invented and available in Singapore, I have been dreaming of buying a roti maker. However, when I clicked on to the link, I got some more ads with absolutely no mention of the roti maker.

Disappointed yet again at having my dreams for a roti maker dashed, I went for another category and was surprised that when I clicked a Painting for sale Mumbai, this is what I got.

Tell, me honestly, would you go for a picture for Rs. 1,75,000 without even seeing what it was all about? This was way beyond my budget in any case but also ridiculously unrealistic- to expect someone to buy a rare painting online without even a hint of what to expect.

Geographical limitations

Apart from the fact that most of the items on sale were not of my interest, most of the locations too were way beyond my reach. The few items on sale like this one for instance was within my ambit but frankly with a vague description like display counter, with no other specifications and with no photo to boot, the advertiser will be lucky to get an inquiry let alone a customer!

A big let down

So all in all, this has been one big disappointment and one which actually left me depressed rather than on a high which I normally feel after I go shopping either online or off. Most of the items were not after my heart, not even on my wish list so even if I wanted to buy something for the sake of buying as most compulsive shoppers do, I am well aware of the adage – a fool and his money are soon parted – and I definitely like to think that I am no fool!

This post is a part of Quikr.com activity at BlogAdda.com

#Blogadda Blogadda Event Online shopping

Comments

2 responses to “Shopping on Quikr”

charmi patel

January 1, 2019

My father died 2 years back and left me with an old restaurant that my great grandfather started with my grandfather 60 years ago. The restaurant has stood the test of time and still has a very small but loyal customer base who had been eating there for generations, but it has remained pretty much the same since it was started, it gets an occasional paint and repair job once every decade and that’s about it. I was a software engineer working with a corporate company, earning around 30 Grand a month, but I wasn’t happy with the job, the job was pretty close to modern slavery, and the kind of work I did there wasn’t satisfying for the soul.
I wanted to take over my father’s business, but I knew nothing about restaurants and to make matters worse the restaurant wasn’t making enough dough for me to take care of my family’s finances, as newer more efficient competitors had cropped up everywhere. I wanted to develop my business, all the banks I approached for a loan were sceptical to say the least as the property that I wanted to attest for the loan, was slowly crumbling into pieces.
One fine day I was sitting at my restaurant and going through all the feasible options available, when I noticed a strange trend, more and more people were starting to get parcels there, instead of walking into a restaurant to eat which made me realize that food is my commodity not the restaurant, so I decided to market my food specially and use the whole restaurant space to start a full-fledged delivery based cloud kitchen. We ran a Kerala cuisine restaurant in Chennai, which was highly in demand, I next wanted to market my product and service in a low but highly effective cost that made me turn toward free classifieds on the internet – Used by millions of people all over India. There are so many portals where one could place free classified ads such as Quikr, Olx, Izydaisy.com to name a few in India.
Within a few months of me placing those free classified websites and using the social media to create awareness about my business, orders came rushing into my roof. I previously was just making 20 Grand running the restaurant business but then just in a few months it turned into 70 Grand, later a profitable amount of 100 Grand a month, I had to quit my job, which I wanted to do for a very long time, hire more chefs and delivery men. Our business got so much traction that people even started asking for our franchise. It was my humble opinion that we were not ready for a franchise yet, but we did manage to start another branch on the other end of the city which is also working great with the help of classifieds, and now I have incorporated YouTube marketing to the mix. We now have our own dedicated food channel that drives more consumers to try our products. I have also started learning to cook, I help out in the kitchen occasionally, for the first time there is nothing much to complain about in my life, free classified has converted me from miserable to satisfied.

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1. Bellybytes
  
  January 30, 2019
  
  Wow that was quite a story and a testament to your intelligence and adaptablity. You recognised the potential of the internet and food delivery and used it to your benefit. I’m so happy for you!
  
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