Argos has announced a partnership with Sainsbury’s that means it will open 10 ‘digital stores’ in the supermarket’s branches across the country by the summer
Apparently the stores, which will range in size from 10k to over 50k square feet will provide shoppers with access to 20k Argos products that can be bought in store using tablets or reserved online for instore collection.
Part of the appeal for Sainsbury’s will lie in that it will be a new use for under-monetised space that they have in their bigger stores. It could also represent a very scalable way for Argos to expand its shop footprint past its existing 750 outlets.
The move further cements Argos as one of the most innovative players on the UK High Street because, needless to say, it has already partnered with eBay as their Click & Collect partner. And it will be interesting to see if there’s an eBay aspect to this new announcement.
3 Responses
I was only thinking yesterday when I was stood in Argos struggling to find something in a 2000+ page catalogue that the in store experience could/should be so much better.
Not sure if it’s just because we are in Cornwall but in our store you have to get the code from a book, then type it into a blue machine that looks like the same one I used to use 10 years ago, only to be told it’s out of stock, if you get lucky you then write the code onto a piece of paper with a miniature pen then head to the till. As it happens I just got bored and left yesterday.
Time for a gin, I’m just mumbling on now. Good day.
The supermarket chains have built stores which are too big for their current product range and have unused or underused space.
Leasing this space to other users (such as Argos) will get them some income.
One issue that may occur is when Argos and Sainsbury’s’ compete in the same product ranges (toys, electrical goods etc.). Argos must tolerate that to some extent when they act as ebay collection points.
I popped into one of these Argos stores located in a homebase, a lot of fast selling lines in stock but bugger all when you start to look closely and everything being done by customers on ipads (not tabs or cheap tablets but proper iPads), just used it to find which proper argos had it in stock local and went there instead