Paragon Footwear
In mass-market footwear retail, the sell-out problem is rarely about the product. It is about the moment of purchase and whether there is enough pull, from both sides of the counter, to make it happen consistently.
Paragon needed a way to motivate consumers to choose their Women’s Collection while simultaneously activating the retailer network pushing it. A dual cashback structure offered a clean answer: reward the consumer immediately at purchase, and let the retailer benefit every time a transaction goes through.
Read more to see how Paragon built a pan-India cashback ecosystem that aligned consumer intent with retailer participation through a single QR code on a nose tag.
How Paragon Footwear Turned a Nose Tag Into a Two-Sided Reward Engine
Most consumer promotions are designed for one audience.
Either the brand activates the consumer, offering a discount or lucky draw to drive purchase, or it runs a trade scheme to keep retailers pushing product. Rarely do both happen at the same moment, linked to the same transaction, with the same degree of simplicity on both sides.
That gap is where most sell-out campaigns underperform. Read More
The Problem With Choosing One Side
In mass-market footwear, purchase decisions are often made at the counter. The consumer is looking at several options. The retailer’s recommendation, shelf placement, and small nudges all influence what gets picked up. If only the consumer is being incentivised, the retailer has no additional reason to push one product over another. If only the retailer is incentivised, the consumer has no pull at the moment of decision.
The result is a campaign that moves the needle on one metric while leaving the other untouched.
Paragon was operating in exactly this environment with its Women’s Collection. The product range had reach and distribution. What it needed was sharper activation at the point of sale, one that worked for the consumer standing at the counter and the retailer standing behind it.
A Single QR Code, Two Reward Journeys
The approach Paragon took was structurally simple: attach a QR code to the product nose tag and let it serve as the trigger for two separate but connected reward journeys.
For consumers, scanning the code led to a quick microsite where they entered basic details and received ₹30 cashback directly to their UPI account. No waiting. No lucky draw. No ambiguity. The reward was assured, instant, and required nothing more than a phone and a UPI ID, both of which are standard in the target audience for this product.
For retailers, every verified consumer transaction automatically added ₹10 to their Paragon Gold Circle App wallet. Retailers already on the app accumulated this across every eligible sale and received payouts weekly. For those not yet registered, the system triggered an SMS with a registration link, and the growing wallet balance gave them a concrete reason to complete onboarding.
The mechanics are detailed in the full case study. What the structure created is worth noting here: a reward loop where the consumer’s participation directly benefited the retailer, and the retailer’s active product push increased the volume of consumer transactions. Both sides were incentivised to keep the cycle going.
What Made It Work at Scale
Three things made this program viable across a pan-India deployment reaching over 10 lakh QR codes and a retailer network of 80,000 to 1,00,000 outlets.
First, the consumer journey was built for a mass-market audience. OTP-based verification, UPI disbursement, and a microsite that worked on entry-level smartphones kept the participation bar low without reducing reliability.
Second, the retailer incentive was designed to accumulate rather than disappear. Wallet-based credits created a growing balance that retailers could see, which kept the program visible across weeks rather than feeling like a one-time offer.
Third, the payout structure was pan-India compliant, including in states like Tamil Nadu where cashback mechanics have specific regulatory considerations. This allowed Paragon to run a single, consistent campaign rather than state-wise variations.
For brand and trade marketing teams looking to drive sell-out in high-SKU, mass-distribution categories, this program raises a question worth examining: are your consumer and retailer incentives designed to reinforce each other, or are they running as separate programs that never quite connect?
Download the full case study to see how Paragon structured the reward flows, what the onboarding mechanics looked like on both sides, and what the deployment looked like at scale.
Download the full case study to explore how Paragon used QR-led instant cashback to engage consumers at purchase, build retailer wallet rewards across 80,000–1,00,000 outlets, and deploy a scalable two-sided incentive system across India.
