Shoppers Stop Opens Up Online Store
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Shoppers Stop is going online, reports Afaqs. The idea is not to create an alternative revenue-source to the offline stores, but to develop an extension to the present business.
On this, Vivek Mathur, customer care associate and vice-president, corporate planning and e-commerce, said,
“We are not looking at the site as a separate business. It is an extension of our brand, which has a strong presence in the physical retail segment. We want to create the same experience for our customers online.”
The focus will be more on the existing customers. As Vivek Mathur puts it, the idea is to create an experience for their customers.
Indian customer already has a large number of online shopping stores. Indiaplaza.com, Futurebazaar.com are some prominent players in this space. Futurebazaar.com is owned by Pantaloons, the company that owns Big Bazaar. It recently got funded by Sherpalo Ventures and KPCB. The amount might be in the range of $20-30m. In that case, they will paying a good deal of attention to the various aspects of the business. Even a good number spent in marketing. The choice for the customer will be plenty. However, these two are positioned differently offline. Big Bazaar has always been about the daily need goods. Whereas, Shoppers Stop is more like a place which people go to on weekends, to have some good, expensive stuff (clothes etc.). They have stalls for the likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Calvin Klein. I would expect a store like Shoppers Stop to have its online presence much before someone like Big Bazaar does that.
However whether the online extensions reflect on the offline business positioning, completely, will be seen only once they have a sizeable number of people visiting their website and once they pay out their online strategies in the time to come.
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Good to know that more and more retailers are going for web channel in India. Site looks neat..Though I am surpised to see Shopper’s Stop charging around 200 Rs. for joining the loyalty program.