Offline & Online Retail Worlds Collide this Festive Season with the launch of Shopex

Shopex is delighted to announce the official launch of its online mobile solution that connects consumers with every local electronics store to find the right product, at the right price and at the right place. It is already one of the top three shopping apps in the UAE, featuring as many as 25,000 products.  The app showcases 400 stores around the UAE, including all the prestigious electronic merchants such as Sharaf DG, Jumbo Electronics, Axiom Telecom, Sony and iStyle.  

Although, the common perception is that e-commerce is the future of retail sales, it will surprise some that over 92% of global retail sales still happen in store1.  Smartphone retail shoppers are doing increasing amounts of research online, with 77% still making their purchase in-store2. Smartphones will influence USD 689 Billion of retail store sales by 20163. Therefore, footfall is still the bread and butter of any store as the online and offline retail worlds collide. 

Rani Assad, Cofounder and Head of Business Development & Marketing commented: “We’re delighted to be officially launching during the holiday season as we have identified a real gap in the market for an online mobile solution that drives offline purchases.  The web is now influencing more than USD 1 trillion of in-store sales globally and Shopex is an integral part of redefining the retail landscape in the United Arab Emirates. Adding new categories including footwear, eyewear, books and sporting goods are also in the pipeline.”

Shopex’s launch is very timely during the festive rush as we’ve all experienced travelling from mall to mall and not finding the right model at the right price on Christmas Eve.  Shopex has the solution for this because the consumer can find out through the app where the product can be found for the cheapest price, and where it is in stock and book the item to avoid disappointment.  

Shopex has revealed the top selling products this December are all mobiles: Samsung Galaxy Tab S, Samsung S6 and the iPhone 6 Plus, which doesn’t differ too much for the rest of 2016’s best performing products,  which also saw the Samsung and iPhone as the most popular items, along with the Mac Book Pro.  The retail platform has also noticed that there are some gender specific trends, with women being most interested in Apple products including tablets, phones and iPods, while men were inclined to choose Samsung products, and in particular tablets and phones, but they do share the same fondness as women for iPods.  Younger boys are not surprisingly spending most time on the app looking at gaming consoles and games, meanwhile the older generation are more engaged by mobile phones and tablets, as well as camera lenses and printer products, such as ink cartridges.

The business model is very focused on the value for the merchants, not just for the consumer, with  value add services that will generate revenue for Shopex and drive footfall for their clients, such as featured products on the app and campaign management; fact tag generation, which is the useful informative labels beside the products; assisted selling with shopping assistants being armed with iPads with all the intelligence they need; market insights with smart data;  as well as social media support.  Shopex is bound to make electronics more competitively priced in the UAE market, which is good news for the holiday season.