eBay and Argos this morning announced a trial partnership which will mean eBay buyers will be able to collect their purchases from an Argos high street shop. Starting in the fourth quarter, 50 selected eBay merchants will be able to plug their inventory into the Argos Click & Collect network. eBay have not revealed who the 50 merchants are that will be participating.
Here’s roughly how it will work from a buyer point of view. Click & Collect will be visible in search results and also on View Item pages. In the checkout flow they will have the option to consider Click & Collect, enter their post code to find the nearest collection point and also add a mobile number for a text message to them that the item has arrived in store.
From a seller perspective, different options are under review in the trial and some details are a bit hazy. In particular, firm pricing has not been decided. eBay team members stressed that the Argos Click & Collect partnership is very much a trial and they would be closely monitoring how it works.
Argos is a smart partner. The have 735 stores nationally (although the trial will rely on just 150) and those stores are set up for collection so it should hopefully be a good in-store experience. Argos is also well ahead of the curve on Click & Collect, having introduced it back in 2000. Now about 30% of Argos sales are through Click & Collect. Last Christmas, 40% of British shoppers used Click & Collect at some point.
And, of course, if you spot any sellers offering this new service in the next few weeks do let us know how it goes.
https://youtu.be/eC5AEAAYy9s
9 Responses
About time! There have been rumours for years that Argos was going to open up it’s collection service to other merchants and it should of done this quicker as there is a pile of cash to be made in doing this.
The post office should of done this years ago and been far ahead of the curve.
Also surprised that online 40% of orders are collected in store, some other giants are around 60%!
It shows that ecommerce has fast out paced delivery and collection services and these need to start pulling their finger out to catch up.
I think to be clear it’s 40% of shoppers last Christmas used C&C last Xmas.
But yes, agree. It shows that customers and eBay get that fulfillment needs to change. It will be interesting to see how it develops but I can see it doing very well.
dw
SO WHAT!
100% of our ebay sales are click and delivered,
to the customers door, and they can collect it from any Royal mail delivery office
I see where all this ‘premium’ is headed, pay extra (to Argos).
Think I’d rather wait at home than wait in line – cos if this should be ‘successful’ the queue will be ‘up the street’.
Being able to collect from a local store is more convenient than having to go to the Royal Mail Delivery Office (which for me is 3.5 miles drive away) or courier depot (most of which are over 6 miles drive).
I assume that the marketplace sellers will simply send out the items by courier direct to the store where they will wait for the customer to collect rather than have some more complex distribution system.
——
Most companies offering a click and collect service (at their own stores) send the items by courier rather than make use of their own internal distribution system (Argos is an exception to this as you can reserve in stock items for immediate collection.
My parents had a strange situation with John Lewis. An item they wanted to buy was out of stock in store and would take 4 or 5 days to get ordered. The staff told them that if they ordered online, click and collect, before 19:00 they could collect it the next day.
Don’t eBay already have this as a postage option ‘Collect+’ ? Although without any integration allowing customers to choose their delivery shop.
ASOS.com allow me, at the checkout to pick between Delivery to Door or Collect+.
If I click Collect+, they allow me to choose a newsagent close to me, I pay and a few days later I get a text telling me my parcel is waiting at the newsagent. Its so easy.
With some smart integration, and good branding & keeping with the tagline ‘Click & Collect’, this should work for eBay.
…You know what would be Amazing? Somehow getting Royal Mail to build a collect+ style network with local shops.
..Oh wait they do with the Post Office Local Collect, but RM forget, Everyone hates PO queues! and they close when most of us finish work!
Royal Mail are missing a trick here.