For those living or working in Auckland’s city centre, online shopping has become even easier.
The country’s largest retailer, The Warehouse, has opened its smallest ever store in Customs Street for customers collecting online purchases today.
The warehouse.co.nz ‘Click and Collect’ store, which opened on Wednesday September 23rd, 2015, is a pop up store that’s just 30 square metres with no inventory on its shelves – unlike the Red Sheds usual large suburban stores.
Customers shopping online can select this store for collection for purchases and pick them up from Wednesday or when notified that their order is ready for collection. Customers can also shop at the store, but will do so via the store’s ‘Endless Aisles’ service, and pay by credit or debit card, as the store is cashless.
Endless Aisles is an innovation available in all The Warehouse stores and links checkouts with The Warehouse website. It enables all stores access to the full range online and make that available to customers at checkout.
The Warehouse Chief Digital Officer Craig Jordan says the pop up store will offer customers added convenience, and underscore the ease of shopping online. “If you’re at home in the evening, but work in the city, you can shop after work, knowing you can pick up from Customs Street the next day during a break from work,” he said.
The store is an opportunity for the company to test the concept and learn what works best for customers, before considering opening similar stores at other sites convenient to large numbers of customers.
Jordan said home delivery was available for all online purchases, but this didn’t suit everybody. “Click and Collect is proving very popular among our customers, as they enjoy the convenience of being able to pop into a store or pick-up point, grab their order and keep moving” he said.
New Zealand online sales at The Warehouse Group have grown from $18.8m in 2011 to $149.2m in 2015.
Jordan said that a ‘clicks and bricks’ retail model was proving to be more effective that pure online, especially for the range of products The Warehouse offered, because of the choice and flexibility it offered customers.
