Traditional brick-and-mortar IT stores will have to blend online and in-store sales channels and differentiate their brands to survive in today's competitive business landscape, say leading IT chain stores.
"Traditional IT retailers need to expand to online sales channels as well as increase the number of physical shops through an acquisition approach," said Sura Khanittaweekul, chief executive of IT retail chain Com7 Plc.
Com7 announced yesterday it will rebrand all of its existing stores including iStudio by Com7, iBeat and U Store, to a new single brand, Studio7, to differentiate itself.
Mr Sura said the rebranding, under a 10-million-baht budget, will apply to all the company's existing 93 branches in 55 provinces.
The company has earmarked an additional 25 million baht for marketing activities in the last quarter of this year.
Mr Sura said Studio7 stores will provide more exclusive products and services with a greater variety of customer-loyalty campaigns. The shops will allocate particular zones to demonstrate new gadgets.
An internal survey found that half of Com7 customers do not know the difference between the company's iStudio shops and others.
The survey also found that users of iPhones use only 20% of the smartphone's features.
Mr Sura said the rebranding will enable the company to attract more customers and increase sales.
The best-selling products at Com7 stores are iPhones, iPads and MacBooks, generating nearly half of the company's sales revenue.
Com7 is the largest of the 142 authorised Apple resellers in Thailand, with a 60% share of local Apple sales.
He said the company plans to spend 80 million baht opening 5-10 Studio7 shops in 2017.
Com7 in August launched an online sales channel, bananastore.com, to capitalise on new-generation customers who lead a digital lifestyle.
"We expect our sales revenue from the online channel to reach 1 billion baht in 2017," Mr Sura said.
Com7 expects revenue to grow by 10% to 17 billion baht this year. Of the total, 35% will come from mobile phone sales, especially the much-awaited iPhone7. Some 30% will stem from computer sales, 10% from tablets and the remainder from accessories.
Mr Sura said Thailand's IT retail market still has room to grow, driven mainly by the replacement segment.
Com7 is joining forces with third-ranked mobile operator True Move to bundle sales of its Apple products with the operator's data tariff plans.
Narong Intanate, founder of Vnet Capital, which owns 60% of Copperwired, one of Apple's authorised resellers, said lifestyle gadgets will be a key growth driver in the future for IT retail chain stores.
Apart from iStudio, Copperwired also operates 20.Life (dotlife) shops to serve the growing IT gadgets market.
Mr Narong said Copperwired has joined hands with mobile leader Advanced Info Service to sell Apple devices together with AIS's attractive data packages.
SET-listed Jaymart, meanwhile, is undergoing restructuring. The board of Jaymart recently approved renaming itself Jaymart Group Holding, and positioning itself as a holding company.
Jaymart will also spin-off its mobile handset operating unit to a new subsidiary, Jaymart Mobile, said Jaymart chief executive Adisak Sukhumwittaya.
The restructuring, which is expected to be completed by 2017, is aimed at enhancing the group's flexibility.
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