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Dark store: are you already thinking about this?

I suppose that after the end of the quarantine introduced in many countries in connection with the pandemic, the dark store format will develop much faster than experts predicted at the beginning of this year. Why? Let's figure it out.

From theory to practice: dark store and its need


Online orders are at the core of this technology. The essence of dark store is that the buyer in the online store forms his consumer basket, and warehouse workers collect it. Then the retailer sends the completed and paid goods to the address indicated by the buyer.



Another kind of dark store, when a customer online collected the necessary goods in a “basket”, paid, and then just physically picked them up at the store. In other words, I used the click-and-collect function.

For the first time, the Sainsbury's supermarket tried to introduce the idea of ​​a “shop without customers” in the UK at the beginning of the 2000s, but then the number of orders was quite small and the retailer had to close this format.

However, over the past few years, supermarkets around the world are faced with a new problem: the shopping area of ​​a “live” store does not allow both real-time buyers and online orders to be served simultaneously, as there are more and more of them.

Nuances: details about the dark store format


A store that works in this form resembles a warehouse in a regular supermarket. On its territory there are only employees - they collect online orders.

In 2009, an attempt was again made in trade to launch a dark store: not far from London, Tesco risked not only putting this principle of trade into practice, but also consolidated the name of the format.

Now dark stores are developing large chains in the European Union, USA and other countries.

“We carefully studied the working principle of our British colleagues, and if we compare our dark stores, they will be very similar. We basically like the Tesco business model, we borrowed a lot from it. And we pass the evolutionary path that it took 10 years, ”says Denis Vasiliev, director of electronic commerce for the Perekrestok retail chain.



Such stores, rather, can be attributed to the FMCG segment, where there are food products and those that are included in the list of essential goods.

The interior of the dark store is organized so that pickers pick up the order as quickly as possible. Here they withstand the temperature conditions required by the goods and comply with all the nuances of storage.

Other niches for stores without buyers


  • this format helps fashion retailers to reduce costs and set more competitive retail prices;
  • Furniture stores are very comfortable with the option of small items for placing an order and issuing purchases as part of large dark stores.

This approach to the sale of goods to the final buyer is quite effective for online trading in everyday goods. This is confirmed by the experience of at least two countries: France, where over 2 thousand dark stores are already operating, and 5.7% account for online sales in the FMCG market; Great Britain, where online sales of consumer goods occupy 7.5% of the market.

In Eastern Europe, until recently, approximately 0.3–1.7% of consumers bought food and daily goods online. However, given the recent events, a rather large jump in these indicators is very likely, of course, in the direction of increase.



Is Digitalization the Future of Trade?


In recent years, Walmart, Albertsons, Stop & Shop, Meijer, Hy-Vee and many others have begun to invest more in automated mini-warehouses inside their stores and open dark stores.

Grocers are not far behind markets. According to Bill Bishop, co-founder of Brick Meets Click, a retail and food product consulting company, for shops that collect, pack, and deliver goods manually, they are expensive. Therefore, grocers are turning to technologies that reduce costs and prevent overloading of retail space where customers are present.

Walmart in Salem, New Hampshire (USA), launched a pilot project with autonomous carts that collect customer orders and deliver them to supermarket employees, who are already preparing the contents for shipment.

Also, the retailer recently opened the Walmart Pickup Point with an area of ​​3,700 square meters. m outside of Chicago, in one of the grocery stores. Customers drive in there and stop in the parking lot, and Walmart employees load their order in the trunk. In addition, Walmart from here to carry out targeted delivery. The inner part of the location looks like ordinary supermarkets of a trading network, but buyers cannot go inside.

Some experts say that such models have an advantage over large centralized warehouses, as they are closer to consumers than classic warehouse areas.

“Microformat helps retailers solve labor and last mile costs,” said Jefferies analyst Christopher Mandeville.

According to his estimates, the cost of delivering products from central warehouses is usually about two times higher than when using a dark store as part of a large store.

“Dark stores at the grocery store are a new trend,” said Michael Demko, founder of Locai Solutions, a consulting company.

At the end of 2019, for example, in the United States, only about 5% of buyers purchased products on the Internet, but even then analysts predicted that in the coming years this number would increase. True, at that moment, most likely, they could not have imagined how the situation in the world would change in just a few months.

e-commerce in numbers


Susan Meyer, Corporate Content Marketing Manager at BigCommerce, says that by the end of 2019 (according to Statista), the global e-commerce market reached $ 3.5 billion and amounted to 14% of the total share of retail sales in the world.

At the beginning of 2020, analysts predicted: by the end of the year, global e-commerce sales will increase to $ 4.2 billion, that is 16% of total retail sales. And the numbers, according to their forecasts, will continue to grow. Now, I think few people doubt it.



At the same time, Susan Meyer draws attention to the fact that competition on the Internet is tougher, advertising tariffs are considerable, and the amount of information is very large. Accordingly, consumers change their principles when choosing a retailer from whom they will actually make a purchase. And therefore, digitalization plays an increasingly important role in increasing the store’s competitiveness in e-Commerce, in fact, as we see in the example of dark stores.

“15 years ago we asked each other: ˮWhat is e-Commerce? What is its use for small business? ˮ. I hope that 15 years later, people will not think about e-Commerce at all, just like we don’t think about electricity today, ”Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, one of the richest businessmen in the world.

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