E-commerce as an avenue has strong growth potential in Saudi Arabia, Médéric Payne, the CEO of Home Centre, said in an interview. Commenting on the decision of the home furnishing retail stores chain based in Middle East to launch homecentre.com in KSA, its CEO said “we believe that e-commerce as an avenue has strong growth potential and this is an important step towards our goal of offering our customers a complete omni- channel experience. Given the credibility of a brand like Home Centre, we are confident that our e-commerce platform will resonate with our customers in the KSA.”
He added “with the proliferation of digital, social and mobile technologies, our consumers are changing the way they shop due to which we have launched our bilingual online platform on homecentre.com. While the brick and mortar format will continue to be important for Home Centre, our foray into the online shopping space is strategically aligned to bring greater convenience to our customers and in future, help the brand reach out to new customers without the constraints of geographical boundaries.”
Excerpts of the interview follow:
E-commerce has recently shown a growth trend in the region, do you think you have entered the KSA market at the right time?
Internet penetration in Saudi Arabia is currently at 75%, and is expected to reach over 90% by 2020. Smartphone penetration is 66.3% and is projected to grow to 69% by 2020. With people from this part of the world frequently using digital platforms, we wanted to be well prepared in terms of logistics and offerings, before officially launching homecentre.com in KSA. After having established the required back-end logistics in place to support demand, and with an educated and internet-savvy customer base, we are confident that this is the right time for us to enter the KSA e-commerce market.
Will you be considering cutting down on stores and focusing more on an aggressive online strategy in the future?
Home Centre has invested wisely in setting up stores with the right people in the right locations over the last 2 decades. We believe that our stores and e-commerce platforms are both equally important and relevant to our consumers. While shopping online provides ease and convenience, especially for low-investment items, the concept of walking into a store and visualizing or experiencing a piece of furniture will not decrease, particularly for high ticket items. Therefore, we believe that moving forward, a ‘brick and click’ strategy will be prudent, with online and offline platforms supporting each other, in an omni-channel strategy, with more store openings in the future.
We will be adopting an aggressive online strategy. Our e-commerce portal is the only channel which lets us showcase our full range of products along with online exclusive products. The wide product offering is backed by exclusive benefits that add value to the online shopping experience, for instance scheduled deliveries, express delivery and multiple payment options.
How is the introduction of homecentre.com aligned to the vision of Saudi leadership?
An integral part of the Saudi Vision 2030 is to boost productivity and become one of the largest markets in the world. Part of the development of a progressive economy like Saudi Arabia is the commitment to grow the retail sector and ensure that modern trade and e-commerce contribute to 80% of the retail sector by 2020. We aim to be part of this movement and move towards a more modern retail sector in KSA through homecentre.com, with the support of our traditional retail presence which is entrenched throughout the Kingdom.
Home Centre has been online for a while now in the UAE, how do you see it enhancing your KSA business?
After the launch of homecentre.com we have strengthened our position in the home furnishings space. People come into our stores to look at products, try them and then choose their preferred colour and model on the digital platform, and make the final purchase online, taking advantage of the convenience of the website. Omni-channel allows the customer to go through all the related processes via their most preferred channels – from research to visiting the store to touch-and-feel the product to the delivery mode of the final purchase. The bottom line is to enable our customers to reach us and shop with us anywhere, anytime
With the platform’s recent foray into KSA, we have already seen significant adoption rates of the website and its offerings over the last month, and given the proclivity of internet penetration and online shopping in the Kingdom, we are confident that our business in KSA will be further strengthened through the online platform.
Do you plan on further introducing any new technology or features?
The homecentre.com website is the first of many steps that have planned to provide our loyal customers with an omni-channel experience and give them a more convenient shopping experience. We have recently introduced Mobile Point of Sales (MPOS) in 6 stores in KSA which enables our customers to look around the store, understand the physical aspects of a product and complete their purchase in an instant. With MPOS, our store staff can process their order through card payments right by the product, rather than taking the customer to a till to complete the purchase. We plan to take this to the other stores as well. Continuous improvement is vital for all teams and ways of working at Home Centre. The company aims to remain a market leader within the region and bringing new ideas and fresh thinking into the industry is something we take pride in, to better serve our customers.