ALLDAY Marts, Inc. said it recently launched a “dark store” concept, which acts as “last-mile fulfillment centers” for its e-commerce website.
In a statement on Monday, the company described dark stores as “dedicated distribution outlets that cater exclusively to online shoppers served by last-mile delivery providers (including AllValue’s very own, GetAll), effectively expanding the geographic coverage of AllDay Supermarket while keeping operating cost to a minimum.”
The supermarket chain currently has 33 physical stores in 25 cities and municipalities across the country. These stores already offer services such as self-checkout kiosks and personal shopper services.
“AllDay has always been proud to hold itself to a global standard in our thrust to compete in the local supermarket landscape,” said Manuel B. Villar, Jr., chairman of AllDay’s parent company AllValue Holdings Corp.
AllDay aims to establish more dark store locations in the second half of this year, it said in its preliminary initial public offering (IPO) prospectus.
Villar-led AllDay filed a registration statement for a P6-billion IPO this month, which consists of 6,857,143,000 common shares offered to the public for 80 centavos each with an overallotment option of up to 685,714,000 shares.
It aims to list on the main board of the Philippine Stock Exchange by November under the ticker symbol, “ALLDY.”
The company said it plans to use the majority of the proceeds to repay a P4.1-billion debt incurred to fund its past and ongoing store network expansion. The balance will be allocated for capital expenditures and to partially finance another round of store expansions.
AllDay aims to grow its 33-store network to 45 by next year and to 100 by the end of 2026. — Keren Concepcion G. Valmonte
