Hammer picks cables over premium headphones for quick commerce

Rohit Nandwani, founder of Hammer Lifestyle, said limited dark store shelf space is what decides an electronics brand’s quick commerce assortment. He was speaking at Inc42’s D2C & Retail Summit 2026, reported on 19 August 2026.

“Limited darkstore shelf space means electronics brands must pick products that generate frequent demand instead of listing their wider ecommerce assortment,” Nandwani said.

In practice, Hammer lists immediate-need items such as cables ahead of high-consideration buys such as premium headphones. Nandwani said he first spotted the channel’s potential in 2023, after seeing a smartwatch ordered on Blinkit as a Rakhi gift.

The panel also featured Chirag Gupta, cofounder of 4700BC, Ritish Garg, cofounder of Longway, and Umair Mohammad, cofounder and CEO of Nitro Commerce. It was moderated by Renu Bisht, founder of Commercify360. 4700BC is contribution margin positive on quick commerce. Panellists noted that distributors traditionally take 8 to 10 percent margin, and that supplying dark stores directly can offset that cost.

The operator read

Shelf space is the binding constraint. That makes SKU selection a demand frequency question, not a catalogue size question. Most brands still walk into a quick commerce pitch with their full ecommerce range and let the buyer do the cutting. That is backwards. Rank your SKUs by repeat rate first, using your own D2C and marketplace reorder data, then arrive with a short list you can defend. A buyer who sees a ranked shortlist will take the meeting further than one who sees the whole catalogue sorted by revenue.

Do this before your next quick commerce conversation. Pull twelve months of order data, calculate the share of buyers who reorder each SKU within ninety days, and drop anything below your category median from the proposal. Keep the cut list. When the buyer asks what else you have, you want a reason for the answer, not an apology.