Zalora building big warehouse in Cavite
Online shopping platform Zalora is investing in a new warehouse that is five times bigger than its existing facility in Carmona, Cavite to cope with the strong growth in storage volume following very high double-digit growth in business.
Zalora Philippines CEO Paolo Campos told reporters the new warehouse will also be located in Cavite in a property owned by its partner Ayala Group. It will be a four-storey building to suit warehouse that can accommodate 5 million inventory capacity or five times more than the one million product inventory capacity of the existing warehouse.
“We will be moving to our new site in partnership with Ayala,” said Campos. They are targeting to move in by the first quarter of 2019.The total investment for this tiered build to suit building is still being finalized. The facility is also located in Cavite.
According to Campos, the new warehouse is just part of the expansion initiatives of Zalora. Other initiatives include the opening of more pop-up stores exclusively in Ayala Malls.
For 2018, Campos said they are opening one pop-up store every quarter in Metro Manila. In the first quarter next year, Zalora will open a new popup outlet in Greenbelt that will feature for the first time in the Philippines an internationally renowned fashion brand.
Most of these outlets are actually Click and Connect-type of shops or exchange centers where Zalora clients can transact physically like returns and pick-up of items shopped online. At present, Zalora has one physical pop-up store in Bonifacio Global City. It has also an existing Click and Connect outlet in Glorietta 4. A pop-up store is designed for the short term, say for 6 months, but the Click and Connect would be longer.
Campos said the company has been experiencing growth higher than the 34 percent growth in e-commerce in the past 10 years. He did not disclose the exact figure but said it is a very high double-digit growth.
The company is also expanding its coverage to about 23 cities next year to serve new markets. It has now an 80 percent nationwide coverage.
In line with this, Zalora has 700 riders to avoid delays in the delivery of items within the committed delivery period.
Campos ensured that their infrastructure has enabled them to serve clients more efficiently, resulting in greater growth and improving net customer satisfaction rating.
It could be noted that close to 30 percent of Filipinos have already tried shopping online and the pop-store will complement in introducing the online shopping platform to non-online shoppers.
Parker Gundersen, Zalora Group CEO, also explained that a pop-up store is designed to engage shoppers of Zalora and to introduce the shopping platform to offline shoppers.
He said that the Philippines is one of the fastest growth areas in Asia where it is present in eight countries such as Macao, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Philippine, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei. There is no plan yet to expand in other countries in ASEAN as they prefer to focus in their existing markets before opening new areas.