For Saudi Research & Publishing Company that has started the Digital transformation in 2011 through all its publications with most of them leading their market (Sayidaty, Aljamila, Arrajol…), the next step for Mohammed Fahad Alharthi, was to add the E-commerce as one of the new strategic assets for the company, interlinked with current company assets as communication remains one of the pillars of this market success strategy.
Based on the constant increase in lifestyle shopping demand in the Middle East, the new E-commerce ALMALL has been created and launched in October 2018 to provide a new localised offer that includes local designs. Aside Fashion, many categories such as Beauty, Fragrances, Home and Electronics allow the customers to shop online not only for themselves but for the whole family as well.
A successful new business model in the region
ALMALL is the only pure player in the region (while others are click and mortar) offering an advanced technology to ensure that all products listed on the Ecommerce are supplied directly from the professional and verified sellers’ commodities and delivered to the end customers.
This choice has a direct impact on short term and long term strategy for the company which limits the operational costs, provide a higher scalability to enter new markets with no structural investment. Moreover, assures no conflict of interest between sellers and ALMALL as it is only dedicated to offer the sellers items only.
To create a complete 360 degrees seamless customer experience from purchase to delivery, ALMALL is working with the leading companies to partner for Payment, Logistics and last mile Delivery services was part of the strategy and offer. Each partner could provide the best of its domain to assure ALMALL being at the edge of its included services
Since its launch, ALMALL already has a traffic of 2 Million users monthly with over 1 Million registered users all over GCC with a majority in Saudi Arabia.
What is next for ALMALL?
The overall plan for Mohamed F. Alharthi is to entirely cover the MENA region by 2021 by offering the best localised offer and assuring that ALMALL customers will experience E-commerce as a real alternative of retail for all the households needs.
By the end of 2019, ALMALL will strengthen its presence in Saudi Arabia and will officially start its operations in UAE, Oman, Kuwait and Bahrain.
Next step for ALMALL is to be introduced in Levant countries in early 2020 where it has already tied with the main distributors and logistics partners.
North Africa operations, from Morocco to Egypt, are already in the plan of ALMALL’s expansion and should come by the end of 2020.
