Zalora opens digital pop-up store in the PH

Online fashion retailer Zalora is hoping to lure in hesitant online shoppers with its first digital pop-up store in the country.

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Located at the fifth floor of the main wing of Shangri-La Plaza Mall, the Zalora store showcases a curated selection of the goods Zalora offers on its website. As one of the representatives present at the store opening this morning said, “If Zalora had a store, this is what it would look like.”

It looks like a typical outlet store with clothing racks, displays for Zalora partners like Sunnies and Nike. But it’s missing a key element of the usual shopping experience: a cash register.

Zalora is trying to bridge the gap of brick-and-mortar shopping and online shopping by having the customers who visit the store pay for their products online. All transactions will be done online using tablets, phones, and laptops, displayed throughout the store. Once you’ve chosen and paid for the items, they will be delivered to you, which is exactly how Zalora does its business. (Yes, you don’t have to carry shopping bags with you when you shop here.) You buy online and get the goods within one to three days, depending on your location. If you buy products worth over P1,000, your items will be shipped to you for free.

This time though they are offering an express same-day delivery option for its customers in Metro Manila. If you buy something before 12 noon, you can expect to get the products on the same day you ordered them.

The Philippines is just the latest market for Zalora to open a pop-up store. They started having these brick-and-mortar stores in October 2014 in Singapore and then they moved on to Malaysia and Vietnam. They open in emerging markets where online shopping penetration isn’t as big as those in more developed countries like the US and the UK. Reception has been good so far, according to Zalora’s Business Development Head Samantha Sim. It encourages first-time buyers to try out Zalora and turn them into repeat customers.

Zalora partnered with MasterCard, Globe, and Samsung for this store’s run. The pop-up store will only be open until September of this year. These partners will be offering exclusive deals.

Samsung, for example, will have an exclusive promo within the store that they’ll be announcing at a later date. Globe and Zalora partnered to offer mobile and Tattoo postpaid customers to access Zalora and other e-commerce sites for only P299 under Globe’s Shopping Bundle. MasterCard will also be providing its own promotion and benefits for Zalora shoppers.

With the Philippine market being the “I’ll have to see it before I buy it” kind of demographic, Zalora’s pop-up store is a good way for them to push their wares to the locals.