Retailer’s scheme to pull online shoppers into stores
Australian fashion retailer Forever New is using New Zealand as a testing ground for its latest e-commerce offerings designed to draw shoppers into its stores.
New Zealand will be the first country where it rolls out its “reserve in-store”, ”endless aisle”, and appointment booking features to its website.
Reserve instore will allow online shoppers to select and put aside a product and size in their nearest store to be tried on within 48 hours.
Endless aisle, which will enable customers to order items from any store and have it delivered to their door, will launch this month.
From there, the retailer plans to access how each feature fares with local consumers and roll them out to Australia and its other markets.
Forever New chief executive Dipendra Goenka said it was using New Zealand as a testing ground. “We’re trying to enhance the shopping experience,” Goenka said. “People can come in, try it on and buy it. The main purpose for us is ease of shopping for our customer, be it online or be it in stores.”
Goenka said New Zealand was an important market for Forever New , though vastly different to its domestic Australian market.
“New Zealand has a longer winter and a shorter summer so that creates a little bit of a challenge for us. We’ve been here for almost eight years now and understand the market much better.”
Kiwi shoppers are more considered when making purchases compared to Australians, he said.
“With the online growth worldwide it’s important that we give the customer flexibility,” he said. “Retailers or e-tailers who make it easy will succeed.”
Forever New was founded by Goenka in Melbourne in 2006, when he saw a gap in the market for women’s occasion wear. The retailer is now co-owned by Tom Singh, who founded UK fashion giant New Look, and Goenka, who runs it with his wife Amanda Goenka.
The first Forever New store opened in New Zealand in 2010. There are now eight stores in total. Forever New’s Auckland Sylvia Park store is it highestperforming store, and the retailer has a distribution centre close to Auckland Airport.
Goenka said Forever New would look to secure a retail site in the $790m Westfield Newmarket development which is scheduled to open at the end of next year.
Online shopping accounts for eight per cent of all retail sales in New Zealand. It is estimated e-commerce will make up 13 per cent of all spending by 2030.
Retail analyst Chris Wilkinson said online was an essential part of retail success but many brands found it “hard to identify how many of their ‘walk-in’ customers shopping journeys began on the internet”.
“The move is a lateral one for Forever New and relatively simple to implement. It’s likely other retailers will follow quickly, similar to how additional purchasing methods, such as Laybuy have now become commonplace,” Wilkinson said.
“This strategy will give some clarity to the numbers and behaviour of shoppers — helping better shape future marketing and ranging decisions.”