Amid the Pandemic, Pomelo Remains Optimistic in Executing O2O Strategy

Pomelo announces the existence of the store offline first in Indonesia, located at the Central Park mall, West Jakarta. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this Thai fashion platform plan delayed about a year to have the first physical outlet in Jakarta.

Decision Pomelo Opening a physical outlet in Jakarta is quite bold when many businesses are busy reducing their physical presence or even moving entirely to online platforms. Pomelo Fashion Chief Retail Officer Anders Heikenfeldt admitted that their decision to open their first physical outlet in Jakarta might be considered strange by some.

However, Anders believes that this pandemic situation also brings opportunities for his company to continue to grow, especially in Indonesia, which for them is the three largest markets in Southeast Asia along with their home countries, Thailand and Singapore.

"Question timing There are indeed challenges, but there is clearly a huge opportunity here. We also can't delay the time because we don't know when this pandemic will end," said Anders.

Anders also added that the existence of a physical store is inseparable for Pomelo which carries the concept of ominchannel and online-to-offline (O2O). In addition to bringing more credibility to consumers, these physical outlets are considered to bring more value to those who feel more comfortable buying clothes by trying them on first.

"So we gave them the option of tap, try, and buy. We are trying to reach the wider community through two different channels so that they are more comfortable," Anders added.

Fitur Tap. Try. Buy is one of the new things that Pomelo also introduced along with their first physical store. This feature allows customers to choose thousands of clothes online, go to the store to try on the clothes already selected, and pay only for the clothes they want to take home.

AVP General Manager of Pomelo Fashion Indonesia, Frankhie, claimed, the new outlet and feature invited enough visitors on the opening day of December 4, 2020. "We haven't made a big promotion yet, but the queues at the store are already quite extraordinary. That also happened because of the health protocols and the capacity of our visitors," said Frankhie.

What's interesting about Pomelo's physical outlets is that the outlets will only display fashion products for the tastes of consumers who shop there. You could say what is displayed there will be a reflection of the fashion tastes of customers who choose to shop there.

This is possible thanks to the artificial intelligence/AI they use to collect and process data from Pomelo customers. From types of clothes, styles, to colors can be learned. "So what is in the store can be said to reflect the tastes of customers in West Jakarta," added Frankhie.

To further introduce these new features and outlets, Pomelo put a number of substantial price discounts. They also use services an influencer on social media to reach a wider market.

Pomelo was reluctant to reveal the target for his new outlet in Jakarta. However, they confirmed that they would soon open other outlets in a number of locations in Jakarta.

"Our second store will be in South Jakarta in Q1 2020," concluded Frankhie.

Pomelo's move to open the first outlet is in line with their original goal as a platform that carries the O2O concept. Indonesia is the third country to have Pomelo physical outlets after Thailand and Singapore. Now the Pomelo application has been downloaded more than a million times with 80% of transactions happening on mobile phones.

But Pomelo is not the only fashion tech with the O2O concept. Several other names also carry a similar concept in the country such as aliveand Berrybenka.