Online cosmetics shopping to heat up with Red Square’s ecommerce play

You know what’s cool? Being able to shop for stuff like perfume online. Ecommerce is becoming a major play for most emerging market retailers. Finally it seems Edgars and it Red Square crew has caught up with the times, with the launch of an ecommerce play for Red Square.

According to Edcon, the holding company for Red Square and other major retail outlets in South Africa, starting today its more than four million account card holders will be able to purchase on www.redsquare.co.za using their Edgars or Jet store card while also earning Thank U points.

The site will extend the cosmetic retailer’s already national footprint of 39 stores and will carry almost 3 000 products.

“Online shopping is growing in South Africa. Despite it being a small share of the market, we’ve decided to make our broad range of cosmetics available online because the increased sales are attractive us,” says Edcon e-commerce executive David Gibbon.

“Cosmetics is a great category for ecommerce. It’s easy to ship and lends itself to online shopping. Customers often know exactly what they’re looking for and a website can provide them with easy browsing of a huge range, good product information, customer reviews and insight about new products, for a rich shopping experience.”

The company is hoping to entice its customers to go online by offering a free sampling programme that gives customers the opportunity to select three samples from a wide range of premium brands and these will be included free-of-charge with every online order.

“It’s a wonderful way to discover exciting new products that you might not have tried otherwise and our research showed sampling to try at home is one of the key customer needs,” says Gibbons.

He also emphasises the importance of a trusted brand in the online space and the ability to serve customers via the most convenient channel for each of their shopping trips.

“Customers seldom shop exclusively either on- or off-line, so being multichannel is an important part of the value proposition, and having physical stores where product can be exchanged is perceived as a big benefit by consumers.”

Red Square also put together an interesting infographic on the shopping habits of women online. The study found that 46% of top end South African women with internet access shop online often or sometimes and 22% of women globally shop online at least once a day.