Online rush to encash on Sachin Tendulkar's farewell

Sachin Tendulkar’s farewell to Test cricket is turning out to be an extravagant affair with rose petals being showered on the cricketer, lanterns lit in the sky, 199 golden leaves on silver banyan trees and a wax statue lined up among other things to honour the Godof cricket.

With all the hype surrounding Tendulkar’s last two Tests, online retailers are cashing in on the euphoria.

E-commerce players have lined up an array of products to woo Tendulkar fans. From high-ticket items to silver coins with Sachin’s image on them and from smaller articles such as mobile phone covers, laptop skins, notebooks, pens and wallets to copies of magazines in which Tendulkar was featured in the 1990s are available on e-commerce sites.

Collectabillia, Flipkart, Snapdeal, eBay, Tradus, Craftsvilla are some of the players that have lined up Tendulkar-related merchandise. Anjana Reddy, CEO, Universal Collectabillia, which sells official licensed Tendulkar merchandise, said other e-commerce players have shown a lot of interest. “All e-commerce players have increased the orders and we definitely expect the sales to increase.”

Companies have also increased their advertising and marketing spends to push Tendulkar’s merchandise. Deepa Thomas, e-commerce evangelist, eBay India, said the plan is to have a special microsite where a consumer can access all Sachin-related items. “Apart from this, we plan to put up billboards and have a special digital marketing campaign to promote the merchandise.”

Snapdeal, which also has limited edition collectibles priced at Rs5 lakh, said it has been seeing an increase in visits on the page dedicated to Tendulkar on its site. “The traffic has increased and the merchandise sales has also been picking up. We are getting into high gear now as the last match draws closer and with that, the sales will definitely spike,” said Amit Maheshwari, VP-Fashion Merchandising, Snapdeal.

Considering the consumer frenzy, websites such as Flipkart and Playgroundonline expect sales to double in the coming weeks. As Tendulkar plays his 200th and last Test match at Wankhede Stadium in Mumbai from November 14-18, sales of his merchandise are expected to shoot up by over 100 per cent, experts said.

Tendulkar’s retirement has definitely become a mega marketing event with even advertisers hiking advertisement rates to cash in on the frenzy. Other brands such as Adidas, Coca-Cola, Toshiba, etc are planning strategic campaigns as Tendulkar gets ready to bid farewell to cricket.