Online Eid shopping is getting popular day by day in the country thanks to the increasing online accessibility of people and urban busy lifestyle.
Almost all leading local brands and local outlets of international brands of clothing, shoes, jewelry and cosmetics have opened their online shopping wing for buying and selling. Hundreds of such websites and pages and online marketplaces on social media like facebook were set up by micro and individual entrepreneurs.
We had sold 2 million dresses during the last Eid-ul-fitr and this time we hope the volume would be more than 3 million, said Monjur Uddin Jewel, Marketing Officer of leading local clothing brand Key Kraft.
"The online sale of the brand is 20 -30 per cent of their total sale in 14 outlets across the country. Of the total online sale, about 20 per cent products are sent abroad, ordered mostly by Expatriate Bangladeshis," he said.
Jewel said they receive the orders online or over the phone and deliver the products through courier and postal services. The money is paid through online payment gateway, mobile and internet banking.
Md. Asif Haque, IT in- charge of CATS EYE, a prominent local brand, said they receive orders online if anybody is interested and deliver the products but yet to launch full-fledged online shopping services.
"We have been preparing ourselves to initiate full-fledged online shopping service by next month," he said.
According to the country's largest online payment gateway service SSLCOMMERZ, around 170 companies have been taking services from them.
The companies are selling almost everything including groceries, foods, cloths, home appliance, electronics, jewelries, books, shoes etc.
There are also some 10 online payment service companies and most of the banks are offering online payment services for online shopping.
Mahbub-ur Rashid Khan, manager of SSLCOMMERZ said the bank and other charges are still very lower than that of costs of time and transports in our heavily traffic-mismanaged city.
"The courier service cost is Tk 30-40 and 2 per cent card service, 2 per cent bank service if it is mobile or online banking. So the cost is not much at all, rather less than transport cost," he said.
He also said the cost of delivery service would be lower when the marketplace will be more popular.
SSLCOMMERZ emerged as the country first online payment gateway, opening the door for merchants and other organisations to accept payments on the internet. SSLCOMMERZ is an online merchant service provider (MSP) where any merchant, utility companies, business houses can receive payments on the internet over their online stores or websites.
The customers are able to make payments using their credit cards, debit cards, and bank accounts. The payment details submitted by the customers are transferred safely to the customers' banks to perform the transactions.
According to the Bangladesh Association of Software and Information Services (BASIS), the annual online sales amount to nearly Tk 200m in the country.
Bangladesh Telecommunication Company Ltd says the country currently has about 40m internet users.
A former office executive of BASIS said the online marketplace would have been more popular by this time as per Bangladesh's context but the sector lags behind the government support.
The e-stores are focusing on products necessary in consumers' daily life and offering goods like foods, clothes, home appliances and electronics items. However, more items are being included on supply list given the demand of that product.
In Bangladesh, the local shoppers pay either in cash or through debit or credit cards or bKash service and the international shoppers make payment through paypal or payza.
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