Sarinah’s, red-plate retail company, holds soft launching for “Sarinah Online” e-commerce, result of the partnership with telkom as infrastructure provider. The site is planned to be officially launched in March 2018.
Sarinah Online provides high quality products in various category. Food and beverages, fashion, accessory, muslim’s collection, handicraft of various material and ethnic fashions such as batik, weaving products or songket.
“Sarinah Online is expected to help user in getting high quality SME’s products easily, to make Sarinah stay in loop with customers.” said GNP Sugiarta Yasa, Sarinah’s President Director, as quoted from Indotelko.
Sarinah Online becomes Sarinah’s focus in entering technology era, following trends and customer demands. On the other hand, this site is an opportunity for Sarinah to invite other SME’s joining their online platform in order to make its products well-known throughout Indonesia.
Sarinah’s step in entering e-commerce is a bit later than other big retail company as Matahari Department Store which already launched Matahari Mall providing all Matahari’s products. Slightly different step is taken by Ramayana, choosing to present as official store in Lazada’s platform.
Change of Strategy
Online channel strategy attracts many conventional retail, due to high internet penetration in big cities. As a result, offline store’s visitors is dropped drastically, causing retailers to shut down. As happened to several retailers this year such as 7-Eleven, Lotus, Debenhams and few Ramayana and Matahari outlets.
Therefore, retailers need to change their strategy by closing its outlets in big cities and move to the second or third tier cities. In those cities with low internet penetration, there will be many business opportunities.
It is visible as Matahari closed four outlets in Jakarta. However, there are two new outlets in Baturaja and Lahat, South Sumatra, also a Nevada store in Surabaya.
As for Sarinah, although not specifically targeting second and third tier cities, the company will open two new outlets abroad.
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Original article is in Indonesian, translated by Kristin Siagian
