Primaris announced an initiative last week that will turn many of its 16 enclosed Canadian malls into an online marketplace known as PriMarche. This first version of the platform allows tenants to sell goods online for delivery or curbside pickup. A differentiator: Customers can shop multiple retailers using a single cart helping to solve their last mile delivery. The platform is powered by Dropit, with which Primaris has exclusivity for Canada. The website went live on Monday and includes five Primaris properties so far. Communities + Commerce Today contributing editor Joe Gose talked with Primaris director of retail and digital strategy Marco Biasiotto about the concept and establishing competitive omnichannel footing.
How does PriMarche work behind the scenes?
Real-time inventory from each participating retailer is captured through a few methods, including an API directly into our e-commerce marketplace. The sale coming through the marketplace to the store is then presented through a device we have installed beside the cash register. So online shoppers can place goods from multiple brands into one cart and have one checkout. It’s effectively like shopping at multiple stores in a mall but only having one checkout. As I’m sitting here in downtown Toronto, I can buy a white T-shirt that’s available in real-time inventory from H&M and a Canada Goose jacket from Urban Trail. The Dropit technology will go to the closest H&M and Urban Trail in the PriMarche system to see if it’s in stock. If it is, H&M and Urban Trail staff will pull it from there. If not, we’ll go to the next-closest location, and so on.
The retailer walks the store, picks the items, puts them in a PriMarche-branded bag and clicks the device to say it’s ready. All that our customer service team has to do is pick up the bags and have them ready for curbside pickup or delivery. From a retailer’s perspective, they can now use their stores as warehouses to redistribute their merchandise more effectively to be closer to where their shoppers live. Then, once we begin to really elevate and fine-tune this, we’ll be able to show what merchandise a retailer has available for same-day or next-day delivery in its trade area. Or if we partner with Uber and other delivery companies, we can have a button on our website that says, “Show me what’s available for delivery in a couple of hours.” If retailers want it, we can do that. Food and hands-free shopping [delivery of goods purchased onsite] is on the road map, too.
How do you mitigate the possibility that a store will run out of a product before in-store staff pick it from the shelf, especially with supply chain issues affecting retailers today?
We require that the brands set their own rules on the number of items we see in stock and can be changed in real time. When the transaction happens on our site, the retailer immediately gets a message on an in-store device that tells them to pick these items, and the time frame in which the order happens from the real-time inventory to when the retailer is messaged to pack the items is minimal.
How are you approaching the fulfillment side? What are your space needs, and how are you handling delivery?
We’ve set aside 500 square feet per mall as a starting point, usually incorporated in Guest Services, but I can see that growing. We are fulfilling from all five of our participating malls across Canada. Retailers are benefiting from the exposure we provide to shoppers on our marketplace as we expand their reach beyond the mall’s trade area in which they operate. Our stores in Kelowna, British Columbia, or in Lethbridge Alberta, now have access to our marketplace customers nationally. Users of PriMarche can shop 24 hours a day, and whether shoppers prefer to shop online or they typically avoid malls, through delivery or click-and-collect we can bring them into our marketplace and, in essence, our properties. We’ll be part of a transaction that otherwise would have gone to Amazon or another e-tailer.
Right now, shipping is free across Canada from our PriMarche marketplace. We will work with our retail partners in time to deliver the optimal last-mile solution for our customers. Customers will have the option of either amassing all of their goods at one shopping center for delivery, which will probably be the most cost effective, or if they want a product ASAP and cost is not an issue, they can have individual items delivered to their house from whatever center as soon as they are selected and picked up by our staff. We are also exploring sustainable delivery partners to minimize the carbon footprint of the last mile.
How is the rollout progressing?
It is early days, but I feel it has been a successful launch with positive momentum. We’re meeting with retailers every day, and now that we have launched the marketplace, interest has increased. We started with eight retailers on our marketplace, and another eight are about to join in the next week or so. We also have about 30 retailers that we’re in advanced negotiations. Furthermore, there is a lot of interest from retailers who are swamped with Christmas season preparations but want to get on our platform in January. Brands have said, “This is great. We’re in five malls, but why don’t we put devices in all of our stores across the country?” And that’s a conversation we’re having now. There are also tenants coming to us and saying, “We’re not in your mall, but PriMarche is a cool platform, and we’d like to be part of it.”