Norwegian photo and print shop, Japan Photo, has seen increases in store-traffic and revenue as a result of offering customers in-store pick-up of online orders.
The photo shop has been trading since 1985, and started offering in-store for online photo orders back in 2004, but since widening that out to include its full product range, it has seen 22% of all orders routed for collection. This has had the knock-on effect of driving up footfall and revenue across its stores. It’s omni-channel ambitions are part of a strategy to out-compete online-only photo retailers.
Chiefly, this is being done by offering customers access to the full range of stock via stores, when using them as online collection points, not dissimilar to the Argos hub-and-spoke model in the UK.
Eric Spydevold (r) & Espen Hauge (l), Japan Photo
“Our pick-up points contribute (toward) increasing customer service levels, because they allow us to guide customers in products and how to take a good picture, when they pick up their online purchases,” said Eric Spydevold, head of ecommerce at Japan Photo. “Many of our customers use the opportunity to buy accessories and other products in our stores when they pick up their online orders. At the same time, we have reduced the total inventory in the chain by having selected products in the shops, and a full range of products via the online shop from our main warehouse. The customer thereby gets the full range of products in the online shop via the pick-up points.
Japan Photo was established in Denmark in 1985, and opened in Oslo in 1990; it is one of the few photo shops in Norway to retain a physical store presence. It has 19 conventional stores with pick-up points, and three dedicated Pick-up Stores in Norway, and fulfils around 30,000 online hardware orders per year, of which shipments to pick-up points constitute 22%.
Espen Hauge, director at Japan Photo, added: “Overall, pick-up through our conventional stores and Pick-up Stores has led to increased sales in a market which is currently marked by sales decline. By relying on pick-up points as part of an omni-channel strategy, we want to appear as a more serious player than pure online shops will be able to.”
