Central Group to regenerate shopping website to bolster its online profits
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CENTRAL GROUP has redesigned its shopping site www.Central.co.th with the goal of having its cyber channel provide significantly more sales than it does now, possibly as much as 10 per cent within eight years.
“Overall sales of Central Retail are more than Bt150 billion. Online sales are a very small percentage of that. But they are expected to grow mightily, because a lot more people are turning to shopping online,” Worawut Oonjai, chief executive officer of OfficeMate, the operator of Central.co.th, said yesterday.
The new website is set to be the flagship online store of Central, he said.
This year’s online sales target is Bt800 million, a major increase from only Bt100 million last year, before jumping to Bt2 billion in five years.
“Now, a retail business needs to go online. Online shopping in Thailand is growing rapidly. That forces us to focus more on this market.
“If we don’t, we’ll lose our customers to the online shopping sites. Our strengths – a large retailer with several million customers and a lot of suppliers – we believe will give confidence to customers when shopping at our online store.
“Our concept is to let customers shop with confidence via Central.co.th, ” he said.
E-commerce in Thailand now accounts for about 0.5 per cent of the retail industry, while globally, it is more like 5.6 per cent. By 2020, it should pass 20 per cent, he said.
More than Bt100 million has been budgeted for promoting the online shopping website this year, compared with Bt40 million last year.
Now there are 50,000 product items from all 18 categories available for online shoppers. This will grow to 120,000-150,000 items by year-end.
“It is not needed to sign in for shopping. But customers have to fill in details such as name and address for delivery. Orders of Bt499 and above will get free delivery, otherwise the delivery charge will be 6-7 per cent of the total sales amount,” he said.
Next-day delivery is available for 12 provinces and will cover the entire country by year-end. Deliveries are made by the company’s 200 vehicles and its partners’ delivery services.
“Flash deals” for 300 products with discounts of 20-60 per cent will be used as a marketing gimmick to draw people to shop at the website.
The company has prepared a 40,000-square-metre warehouse that can support online sales of up to Bt5 billion, so now there is no need to invest more in warehouses.
“We will harness Central’s strengths, both online and offline, to increase the competitiveness of Central.co.th.
“For example, soon we will launch ‘click and collect’ to allow online customers to pick up purchases at the department store if they want to. Now, Central’s customers can use points as cash or use points together with cash to pay for online shopping,” he said.
The company has trialled Central.co.th for months, with business expanding 25-30 per cent per month.
Now, it offers online shopping via websites and mobile sites only. By the last quarter of this year, a mobile applicaton will be launched.
Average online spending is Bt2,400-Bt2,500 per order.
