By Arra B. Francia, Reporter
FASHION E-COMMERCE site Zalora Philippines is moving into a new warehouse facility in Cavite by 2020, where it can expand its current capacity by more than six times.
Zalora Philippines Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Paulo Campos III said on Wednesday that it has partnered with Ayala-led AC Infrastructure Holdings Corp. (AC Infra) for the construction of a 40,000-square meter (sq.m.) New Fulfillment Center located on a 3.7-hectare property near the Muntinlupa-Cavite Expressway.
“We’re experiencing really accelerating growth and tremendous, (especially) on super peak days. We really have had to build out a new facility,” Mr. Campos told reporters in a media roundtable discussion in Taguig City on Wednesday.
“It’s a build-to-suit facility that will feature very innovative conveyor technology, some forms of automation, and increase the throughput.”
The New Fulfillment Center will have a capacity of 7.2 million items, six times more than its capacity of 1.2 million items at its Carmona warehouse.
“Our strategy is to retain the one fulfillment center strategy…We could use it (the Carmona site) for (Entrego’s) expansion. We would potentially make use for it as an alternative site,” Mr. Campos said, referring to its last mile logistics service, Entrego.
AC Infra is funding the construction of the facility that is scheduled to be completed by December 2019. Zalora Philippines will then lease out the property from AC Infra.
The warehouse will also include a 5,000-sq.m. office space, which can employ up to 1,200 employees.
The new facility will address the strong growth of Zalora Philippines’ customer base and wider assortment of products available on the website.
By end-2018, Zalora Philippines counted a total of nine million e-mail subscribers, 7.4 million app downloads, 7.7 million Facebook fans, and 100 million website sessions. The company noted that 70% of its customers are women, while 30% are men.
Bulk of its customers come from Metro Manila at 42%, followed by the Cavite and Laguna area with seven percent, and Cebu with six percent. Its two fastest-growing geographies last year were Batanes and Sulu.
To sustain this growth, Zalora Philippines is partnering with several established brands such as Debenhams, Marks & Spencer, J. Crew, Jack Wills, Pomelo, and designer Josie Natori’s sleepwear brand Josie and clothing line N Natori. It is also expanding into the kids’ category.
“Zalora Kids is a new source of growth for us in 2019. Now that we have a more established customer base between the age of 20 and 40, the real millennial years, we want to be able to ensure we have a product for the whole family,” Mr. Campos said.
The company is also building four new pop-up stores in different shopping malls this year, with two in Metro Manila and two outside the metro, to further boost customer convenience in picking up orders.
