As 2021 enters the last quarter of a tumultuous year, it’s impossible to know what the future holds. What is certain however, is that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic will be felt for months to come and most likely permanently. More so as customers will have to cope with the passing of ‘instant gratification’ that shopping in a physical store offers.
In this environment there has been a shift to ‘dark stores’. This has nothing to do with Eskom and a lack of lighting but rather where physical retailers – from small to enterprise businesses — have opted to use their retail space for storage of large volumes of inventory. This solution enables them to still fulfil online orders while also enhancing options such as fast delivery and same-day pickup from the ‘store’.
Set up mainly to fulfil orders as warehouse and distribution centres, there are numerous benefits to this dark store arrangement, including the fact that customers no longer need to find parking and the system affords faster delivery as the warehouse layouts are optimised for easy, more accurate picking.
While the dark store concept is common in the UK, France, China, and other countries, it is slowly gaining traction in South Africa. According to Vutlharhi Valoyi, CEO of South African grocery delivery marketplace Zulzi – which, through a mobile app, members can shop at stores such as Pick n Pay, Woolworths and Dis-chem – he is seeking to raise R100 million to extend its network of dark stores nationwide.
While presently groceries are the focus of this dark store trend, the scope is growing, as retailers from supermarkets and grocery stores to convenience stores and department stores, have decided to go over to the dark side…
As the dark store trend grows, we will discuss the pros and cons in future blogs.
