The India’s largest smartphone company, Xiaomi has begun to cover its logo outside multi-brand cellphone stores with the ‘Made in India’ logo and has asked its shop floor promoters not to wear uniform fearing that miscreants may damage the shops or attack promoters due to anti-China sentiments.
The Three of the senior industry leaders said that this comes on back of the brick-and-mortar cellphone stores, under their body All India Mobile Retailers Association (AIMRA), writing a letter to the Chinese smartphone brands about the threat of damages to shops for selling such products allowing them flexibility to remove or hide brandings. This is since the brand signage is linked to retailer incentive and any damages are retailer liability.
The executives said Xiaomi has already covered most of the retail signage in cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Agra, Patna amongst others where there has already been reports of demonstration against Chinese brands and threats to shops.
AIMRA has written the letter to Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, Realme, OnePlus, Lenovo-Motorola and Huawei requesting them to allow retailers to either cover the signage or remove them for a few months till the anti-China sentiments die down.
“Damage to these boards should not be the retailer’s liability as the circumstances are not in our hands or in our control,” the letter said.
According to ET, an email sent to Xiaomi did not elicit any response till Wednesday press time. Industry executives said other Chinese brands are yet to take any action like Xiaomi has done. Be that as it may, retailers said there has been no impact on demand for Chinese brands except due to short supplies which several brands like Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo and OnePlus are facing. In fact, Xiaomi India MD Manu Kumar Jain on Wednesday tweeted that one of its models was sold out online in less than 50 seconds.
