Shoppers Stop uses online subsidiary to get back on Amazon marketplace

Shoppers Stop, the country’s oldest department store chain, is using its online subsidiary Shoppersstop. com to get back on Amazon as it eyes a larger share of sales from e-commerce segment.

On Thursday, Rajiv Suri, managing director and chief executive officer, Shoppers Stop, said its website would list on Amazon in compliance with regulatory requirements and almost 120 stock-keeping units mainly in apparels would be available in the forthcoming days, which would be steadily increased over time.  “Shoppersstop.com is a separate legal entity with no investment from the US retailer,” Suri said. “It is, therefore, in compliance with the draft e-commerce policy that came into effect this year, allowing us to make our products available on Amazon. We will start with apparels and then move to other sections such as lifestyle and beauty,” he said.

In December, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry had issued a notification prohibiting e-commerce marketplaces from selling products of firms in which they had a stake. 

The move had prompted Shoppers Stop, in which Amazon has a 5 per cent stake, to delist, hitting its e-commerce business significantly. For the fourth quarter of FY19, the online business of Shoppers Stop, which is 1.7 per cent of its overall sales, grew only 10 per cent over the year-ago period as the Amazon platform wasn’t available to it to sell its products. Net sales for the period under review increased 5 per cent to Rs 1,044 crore with same-store sales growth at 4 per cent.

For the full year of FY19, however, Suri said its online business grew 44 per cent over the year-ago period, pointing to the importance of Amazon to its e-commerce operations. “With Shopperstop.com now listing on Amazon, our online business should touch 2 per cent of overall sales in FY20,” he said. The firm is also expected to use a part of its capital expenditure of Rs 150 crore earmarked for FY20 in the integration of the two websites to ensure smooth customer experience, Suri said. The firm is also looking to launch around 25 offline stores in FY20, of which 6-7 will be departmental stores and the rest will be beauty stores, he said. 

The number is an increase over FY19 when it set up two departmental stores and 12-13 beauty stores.