Zara opens first-ever click and collect shop
Zara is opening its first ever click and collect store at the Westfield Stratford shopping centre in London. The shop will remain open until May while the chain’s flagship store in the centre is being refurbished and extended.
The pop-up store spans nearly 200 square metres and will offer a selection of women’s and men’s clothing for online purchase directly in-store, along with the rest of the brand’s fashion ranges.
Store staff will be on hand with mobile devices to assist customers, who will be given the choice of receiving their orders on the same day if placed before 2pm, or the next day if placed in the afternoon.
The store also features a product recommendation system based on information screens embedded into mirrors. Once customers scan an item using radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, the system can bring up, in the right size, multiple choices for co-ordinating and combining the item the customer is trying on with other garments and accessories.
Next week work will begin on expanding and refurbishing the existing Zara store in Westfield Stratford. The new store will be extended to 4,500 square metres and will feature an automated online order collection point serviced by two small warehouses which will enable shoppers to pick up purchases made on www.zara.com whenever it suits them.
Zara said the system has been designed around an optical barcode reader which scans the QR code or accepts the PIN codes received by customers when they place orders online. In just a few seconds, it delivers the order to a mailbox from which the customer can collect it. Behind the scenes, a dynamic robot moves through a small warehouse with the capacity to handle 2,400 packages simultaneously.
Commenting on the two new store concepts, Pablo Isla, chairman and chief executive of Inditex, said the stores marked another milestone in Zara’s strategy of integrating stores with the online world.
