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After months of pressure Australia’s two biggest retailers, Myer and David Jones, are preparing their resources to integrate their traditional stores to a new online market. Myer has braced itself to offer up to 70, 000 products through its online store. David Jones also announced it will offer up to 90, 000 products. But competition from the latest breakthrough in purchasing through magazines on tablets may present itself as a major threat.
It was recently announced that Myer will be opening a dedicated distribution centre for its online purchases. The warehouse will be located in Melbourne and will house roughly 15, 000 of Myer’s most popular products. However, they are still working on ways to optimise their online and offline fulfilment.
The recent reshuffling in David Jones executive team has raised questions as to when the company will start to implement omnichannel strategies into their traditional bricks and mortar stores.
”David Jones are doing the right things on paper right now in terms of actually strategising for a future with the whole omni-channel thing “ according to Steve Ogden-Barnes, a retail industry fellow at Deakin University said.
”They’re not necessarily doing anything wrong now, they’re just doing it too late. You’ve also got to start to wonder from his point of view whether he’s thinking, ‘Is this a race we’re ever going to win?”’
However, all of this sounds good in theory, but with such heavy resistance from Myer and David Jones when introducing omnichannel strategies into their businesses, it raises questions as to how well they will be able to adapt in an ever changing market.
Magazines that can be viewed through tablets will soon be offering a kind of ‘shop as you read’ option for subscribers. Readers will be able to tap on the shopping cart icon next to each product in order to purchase the item automatically.
Reporter Andrew Mudie states that the “potential reach of this technology is limitless”, and although this technology is still in its early stages, it does show that Australia’s major retailers are going to need to adapt and innovate moving into the future of online purchasing.
We’d love to know what you think about these new developments in online purchasing and if Myer and David Jones are on the right track in the online retail world. If you want to learn more about online retail and the different ways of fulfilling order, you can join us at the inaugural Online Retail Logistics conference