Sunway Malls bets on new eCommerce platform to grow beyond physical footprint

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Sunway Malls has unveiled its eCommerce platform, Sunway eMall.com, as part of its strategic digitalisation effort to complete its physical and digital mall presence after. The eCommerce platform is set to launch on 27 October and will complement its current combined 4.5 million square feet of physical retail space of seven malls.

There are currently 200 merchants are on board with 30,000 SKUs, covering various trade categories such as fashion, home and living, beauty, health, and wellness, among others. The list of participating merchants includes Sony, Huawei, Sketchers, Li Ning, Braun Buffel, Aldo, L’Occitane, Christy Ng and Hooga, among others. Over the next 18 months, Sunway eMall aims to grow to 500 merchants with 100,000 SKUs.

According to the company, the Sunway Malls’ eCommerce initiative comes timely to grow the group’s footprint to a larger market beyond its physical malls’ catchment areas. According to HC Chan (pictured), CEO of Sunway Malls and Theme Park, the venture into the digital space opens up new markets and possibilities for Sunway Malls. "We are not time and geographical bound," he added.

Chan explained that the eCommerce platform amalgamates its physical malls presence into one digital mall. Through this exercise, Sunway Malls portfolio has also grown to eight malls – physically and digitally. The launch of the Sunway eMall will also enable Sunway Malls to offer an O2O journey with the convergence of both online and offline shopping experiences. It supports the mall group operator to switch seamlessly between these two domains, offering consumers an online and offline experience. A+M has reached out to Sunway Malls for additional information regarding the eCommerce initiative.

Apart from completing the physical-digital mall presence, the mall group is also eyeing the eCommerce platform as an insurance and contingency against unforeseen geographical or retail sub-sectors lockdown. “What we had witnessed over the last 20 months was the unpredictability of how such lockdown can be – its suddenness and its duration which is very disruptive. For the record, the retail industry faced 153 days of closure in 2021 relative to 47 days of closure in 2020. Sunway eMall will allow retailers some form of business continuity if this ever happens again,” said Chan.

Earlier this month, Sunway Malls launched a customer engagement hub for more innovative and engaging experiences with its audiences. In line with Customer Service Week held on the first week of October, the hub aims to improve both productivity and efficiency in managing Sunway's customers.

With the use of digital tools such as a renewed omnichannel strategy, Sunway Malls is pivoting to be more inclusive of the growing popular communication channels such as social media. This includes streamlining internal engagement processes for in-mall and online channels, as well as training the customer care team towards an innovative and digital skills-ready mindset.

Separately, Sunway Pyramid also drew chatter over the past few days when it worked with Netflix to recreate the iconic doll and scene from the "Red light Green Light" segment Squid Game. The activation was done in collaboration with The Chariot Agency, C27 and Maker Lab and runs until 31 October. Loo Hoey Theen, GM of marketing and deputy head of business innovation, Sunway Mall told A+M last week that since 14 October, Sunway Pyramid has seen an overall increase of close to 10% of footfall as compared to the same day last week, bearing in mind that it is not the weekend yet. Additionally, the footfall around the activation area increased by 15%, she said.

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