Retail in Asia

In Trends

Zalora launches second pop-up store in Singapore

Following the successful launch of the first pop-up at ION Orchard last year, Southeast Asia’s online fashion retailer yesterday launched its second digital interactive pop-up store at Bugis+, a shopping mall in the Bugis district of Singapore.

The 2,400-square-foot retail space hosts a selection of international and inhouse brands with exclusive collections from highly anticipated labels including Finery London, River Island, Material Girl, Dorothy Perkins, Burton Menswear London, ZALIA and Zalora label.

Customers who visit the store can shop via their personal mobile devices on the Zalora app with the free in-store Wi-Fi. All products at the Zalora pop-up will be tagged with two codes – a barcode, for express checkout in-store, and a QR code – where customers can scan via Zalora’s in-app QR code reader. By scanning the QR code of the desired product, customers are able to have products added to their cart automatically or have it saved to their "wishlist". This allows customers to cart out on their devices even after leaving the store, providing them with the option to shop for even more products on the main catalogue in the comforts of their own home.

This innovative model allows Zalora to overcome the bottlenecks of retail, one of which is the checkout line, as customers can bypass long queues and make purchases at their own time and convenience on their mobile devices. Additionally, to better analyse retail bottlenecks and customer behaviour, Zalora has also partnered up with a California-based company specialising in big data solutions for offline retailers – whose clients include Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s – to achieve similar levels of data sophistication as with Zalora’s e-commerce platform, with the tracking of traffic, dwelling and demographic patterns.

"Our first click-and-mortar concept at ION definitely pushed the boundaries of retail in Singapore and for our second pop-up store at Bugis+, we wanted to focus on streamlining the customer journey further to make it as practical, convenient and seamless for anyone who steps in (and out). This was what prompted the push towards a mobile app interaction via a customer’s personal mobile device, where his/her journey no longer ends at the store but becomes part of a continuum shopping experience even if they choose not to transact in-store," said Dione Song, Managing Director of Zalora Singapore.

Zalora’s pop-up store was designed to increase awareness of the brand among consumers in Southeast Asia. This online-to-offline strategy completes the customer experience as one of the many qualms about online shopping is the inability to test and try on products before purchase. In addition to Bugis+, Zalora has also opened several more pop-up stores in Malaysia, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.