Dubai: Landmark Group, a Dubai-based retail and hospitality conglomerate, plans to expand its omni-channel offerings to add more convenience to customers. “It’s about building new channels that did not exist before and taking the existing omni-channel features and improving those and expanding the reach of those to our customers,” said Savitar Jagtiani, business head of e-commerce at LandmarkShops.com, the online arm of Landmark.
Landmark joins many companies worldwide that have embraced omni-channel retailing, which involves integrating physical stores and e-commerce operations across a range of devices.
The retailer is looking to introduce “buy online and fulfil from store”, meaning a product bought online is delivered to a customer from their nearest store, Jagtiani said.
“For example, if a customer lives in Dubai Marina and one of our stores is in Marina Mall, maybe the fastest route to get the product to the customer is not from the warehouse to Dubai Marina; it is from one of our Marina Mall stores to Dubai Marina,” he said.
The company also plans to launch “reserve and collect”, he said. He declined to say when the service and “buy online and fulfil from store” will be launched.
Revenue growth
The retailer introduced “pay and collect” last December, with consumer electronics retailer, Emax, the only brand currently integrating it. The service allows consumers to order goods online and collect them in stores. Four other brands are expected to incorporate it within a year, Jagtiani said.
LandmarkShops.com features over 30,000 products from five brands including Splash, Babyshop, Emax, Lifestyle and Max. The retailer aims to take the remaining 9 retail brands online, but did not state a time frame.
The site aims to double its sales in the next financial year ending June 2016, Jagtiani said. He declined to say the expected sales figure for the current financial year. It anticipates to post a 200 per cent revenue growth in the current financial year (July 2014-June 2015).
Landmark plans to launch LandmarkShops.com in Arabic by the end of the year.
Jagtiani said that consumers are increasing using their mobile devices to shop online. Over 47 per cent of traffic that LandmarkShops.com gets is from mobile devices, while desktops and tablets account for 45 per cent and 8 per cent of traffic, respectively.
