Dubai
Paris Gallery’s recently introduced loyalty programme is managing to hit quite a strong note. It has swelled to 226,000 members since its formal rollout in May last and between them they have managed to accumulate 85 million points.
As the ‘Luxury Club’ builds up scale, Mohammad Abdul Rahim Al Fahim, CEO of Paris Gallery, believes it gives him the right platform to give serious thought to getting into e-retailing. That in one go would instantly extend the company’s reach into some of the other Gulf markets as an adjunct to the physical stores it already operates there. (Perfumes and cosmetics offer operating/profit margins much higher than those typically available for tech gadgets for e-retailers).
“An e-commerce presence has been in the plans for some time — we should be in a position to decide sometime this year,” said Al Fahim. “To start with, my expectation is to touch 5 per cent of overall group sales via e-commerce and that gives us ample scope to scale up further.
“As a retailer, we have to bring in technology to help us interact with customers, existing and new ones, in a more dynamic way. That is the accepted way for any business to grow in future. There are already good examples of how luxury and fashion have come together with technology to offer things consumers never had access to in the past.
“Consumers are already using most of these technologies in their daily lives. UAE retailers will have to engage with them across as many points-of-contact as they want. They will also have to come up with wholly different offers — compared to what they have in-store — to complete this cycle. E-commerce is not about offering more of the same.”
