“We are conducting various negotiations on the provision of door-to-door logistics for some shopping centers, which would have the opportunity to easily deliver their goods directly to customers’ homes, at least in the largest cities,” says Michal Menšík, DoDo’s logistics start-up. On the one hand, the centers could expand the circle of customers and at the same time more easily cope with lockdown-type situations. The head of DoDo does not want to provide more specific information yet.
According to business people, there will still be a long way to go when a customer could go through the entire shopping center online, or at least most of it, order from two or three stores at once and get everything home in one shipment.
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“In the future, it is possible that the market will develop in this direction. However, it is a demanding process, where the cash register and warehouse systems of individual tenants will have to be integrated and a logistics headquarters will have to be established, ”says Karolína Peterková, Marketing Director of the Palladium Shopping Center.
Palladium in the center of Prague is one of the most affected due to the absence of tourists. According to Peterková, they have already registered these attempts abroad, but so far they concern only a limited number of tenants within the individual centers.
Test experiments
However, the first activities in this direction can already be found in the country. “These days we are coming up with the Click and order service, within which customers will be able to order the goods of our tenants online and pick them up at the dispensing window. The first brands to get involved in the project are Guess and Calvin Klein, “says Jan Procházka, director of the completely closed Freeport Fashion Outlet near Znojmo.
“We are already working on the task of being online and at the same time we maximally support any activity of individual tenants. This week, for example, our Polo Ralph Lauren store launched a unique sales channel, which offers the possibility of virtual shopping, ”describes Lenka Čapková, head of the Fashion Arena Prague outlet.
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Virtual shopping takes place by the customer reserving an appointment and then connecting a sales assistant who is physically in the store via the Zoom, WhatsApp or FaceTime application. “It can show you the required assortment in detail, or advise you on a suitable alternative and then prepare everything for sending by courier service,” explains Lenka Čapková.
At least vouchers online
For the time being, most traders believe that measures against coronavirus will be relaxed by Christmas. However, they already have at least an online sale of gift vouchers to stores in the center. This is the case of Palladium, Nový Smíchov, but also a number of other shopping centers.
The advantage is that the vouchers will be valid all year round. The sale of vouchers is the easiest way for the centers to hook the customer, get money in advance and commit the recipient to visit.
The Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield company, which includes the Westfield Chodov, Metropole Zličín and Černý Most centers, follows a similar procedure. “This year, for the first time ever, the Černý Most Center will offer a Christmas edition of gift cards online. The card with a credit of five hundred crowns will be available for purchase on the Mall.cz e-shop and can be used by any of the center’s tenants for a period of one year from the order, ”says Petra Valentová, spokeswoman for Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.
The Westfield Chodov shopping center also launched a “car delivery” service in October. It works so that the customer orders on the center’s website from the offer of selected stores. Eight vendors were active during the weekend. The customer can come to the parking lot of the shopping center for the goods on the same day, where they will bring them from the shop. The only disadvantage of such a handover is that the individual shops have different parking lots set aside, so that any collection of goods from several of them means large movements of vehicles across the parking area.
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