EVEN after the ‘explosion’ of online stores with the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, which substantially curtailed movement following the imposition of various forms of lockdown measures, it has been said that online retail will never replace physical retail stores.
In fact, both forms of stores are bound to complement each other more going forward.
With that in mind, Sunway Malls which currently operates seven physical malls presence is set to roll-out its e-commerce platform – Sunway eMall.com – on Oct 27.
The e-commerce push is part of the mall group’s strategic digitalisation effort to complete its physical and digital mall presence. This comes at a time when online traction has gathered speed due to COVID-19.
Since the pandemic began, an estimated 70 million more people have transited to shop online in six Southeast Asian countries including Malaysia, according to a report from Facebook and Bain & Company.
As reported in CNBC, Facebook and Bain & Company have further projected that average online spending will grow 60% this year from US$238 (RM990) per person in 2020 to US$381 (RM1,585) per digital consumer.
Thus far in 2021, online retail’s share of overall retail in Southeast Asia has spiked to 9% from 5% a year ago.
Over the next five years, Southeast Asia’s e-commerce sales is also projected to keep pace, growing at 14% a year with online shoppers forecasted to reach 380 million by 2026.
Given the immense potential, the Sunway Malls’ e-commerce initiative is timely to grow the group’s footprint to a larger market beyond its physical malls’ catchment areas.
“Certainly the venture into digital opens up new markets and possibilities for Sunway Malls. We are no longer time and geographically bound,” commented Sunway Malls & Theme Park CEO HC Chan.
“The Sunway eMall will complement our current combined 4.5 million sq ft of physical retail space of seven malls.”
By amalgamating its seven physical malls presence into one digital mall, Sunway Malls’ portfolio has also grown to eight malls –both physically and digitally.
E-commerce as insurance
An initial 200 merchants covering various trade categories such as fashion, home & living, beauty, health & wellness, food & beverage (F&B) e-vouchers and others are on board in the Sunway eMall initiative with 30,000 stock keeping units (SKUs).
The list of participating merchants includes Sony, Huawei, Sketchers, Li Ning, Braun Buffel, Aldo, L’Occitane, Christy Ng, Hooga and more. Sunway eMall expects to grow the existing list to 500 merchants with 100,000 SKUs over the next 18 months.
The official launch of Sunway eMall will also enable Sunway Malls to offer an offline-to-online (O2O) journey with the convergence of both online and offline shopping experiences.
This supports the mall group operator to switch seamlessly between these two domains in a more effortless manner and to offer the best of both worlds.
“Additionally, what separates pure e-commerce players is the option for in-store collection apart from delivery which is a further catalyst in driving more footfall into our malls. We see a great upside to this,” Chan pointed out.
Apart from completing the physical-digital mall presence, the mall group is eyeing prospect of its e-commerce platform as an insurance and contingency against unforeseen geographical or retail sub-sectors lockdowns.
“What we had witnessed over the last 20 months was the unpredictability of how such lockdowns can be – its suddenness and its duration is very disruptive,” reiterated Chan.
“For the record, the retail industry faced 153 days of closure in 2021 relative to 47 days of closure in 2020. Sunway eMall will allow retailers some form of business continuity if this ever happen again.”
In a related development, the group’s physical malls have shown signs of good recovery with the complete re-opening of the retail sector.
To-date in October, preliminary indicators have shown 80% traffic normality compared to the same pre-pandemic period of 2019 with shoppers making a strong return to Sunway Malls in the beginning of 4Q 2021.
The number is expected to pick up pace heading nearer to the year-end festivity.
“Sunway Malls is optimistic that its recovery can be sustained as Malaysia prepares to move from pandemic to endemic with the full compliance of safety protocols,” projected Chan. “We expect attaining full pre-pandemic level performance in the near term.” – Oct 18, 2021
