When it comes to delighting today’s ‘want it now’ retail shopper, offering ship-from-store fulfilment will see you convert more sales and lower inventory and delivery costs.
A recent CBRE report on retail in Australia states that online spending is expected to rise to 12% by 2022, representing an 80% increase in annual volume. At the same time, traditional retail is projected to grow at a much slower rate of 3.2%. Therefore, your physical stores must give shoppers immediate satisfaction as well as amazing experiences to entice them to come back.
Consumers expect instant gratification in almost everything they do. Like being able to binge-watch Netflix or grab a shared electric scooter anywhere, any time. So if your store can’t sell something a customer wants and you can’t promise they’ll get it quickly, they’ll go elsewhere.
Instant conversion with ship-from-store
To put a ship-from-store strategy in place, you need to make your inventory accessible across all stores and channels. Then if a customer visits a store but the item they want isn’t there, staff can find and order that item from another store and that store’s staff can ship it to the customer’s preferred address.
With ship-from-store, you’re essentially turning your stores into mini-distribution centres that let you:
Give customers an endless aisle: Sell stock from any store regardless of where the stock is held. Convert rather than lose sales.
Get items to your customers faster: If you’ve got a geographically dispersed store network, shipping from store can be faster than shipping from a warehouse that’s across the country.
Reduce delivery costs: You don’t need to move stock great distances if you can send from a store that’s nearby. Leverage your physical store advantage.
Improve customer experience while reducing inventory costs: Customers can be confident of buying what they want from any store, without you carrying the cost of carrying every item everywhere. It’s a win / win situation.
Our client, Cue Clothing, is seeing a 70% increase in conversion from their store-to-door and endless aisle implementation.
See what’s possible for you with Infinity order management
When you combine Infinity’s accurate near real time inventory management with its flexible order management, you can put a game-changing fulfilment strategy in place for your own business. Find out more about optimising fulfilment with Infinity.
