Online sales increased by 142% in Q1, Falabella overtook the competition in Latin America

Recently, Latin American retail giant Falabella released its first-quarter online sales data, which increased by 142% compared with the same period in 2020 to US$805 million, of which the Marketplace business had sales of US$186 million.

In fact, strong demand for home improvement products helped Sodimac’s regional revenue grow by 28%, while e-commerce grew 201% compared to the same period last year, with sales of $156 million.

Survey data show that the company has achieved continuous growth in the past 12 months to the end of March 2021. During this period, the company registered online sales ( GMV) of $3758, of which $854 million corresponded to the Marketplace.

On the other hand, Falabella continues to accelerate the execution of its logistics strategy. During the quarter, more than 6 million orders were dispatched in the region, three times more than in the same period last year. Likewise, service quality levels have improved significantly. In Chile, 60% of product orders from its retailers were dispatched in less than 48 hours in March.

General Manager Falabella said that during this period, significant improvements have been made in the level of service quality, thanks to the use of new technologies and greater innovation, which has enabled a greater focus on responding to customers in a timely manner.

In addition, the company continued to deepen its financial digitalization strategy. During this period, the opening of CMR 100% digitalization accelerated, reaching more than 145,000 cards in Chile, Peru and Colombia. In Chile, digital turnover in March exceeded the total of physical and digital turnover of the previous year.

Meanwhile, the group’s digital wallet and own payment processing platform Fpay processed $585 million in the first quarter, up 71%. In addition, the CMR Puntos loyalty program has attracted 11.4 million customers in the region as of March 2021, up 85% from March last year.

“During the first months of the year, we achieved the integration of all our retail and marketplace businesses under the consolidation of falabella.com. This is a process that was already underway and which involved a very extensive transformation to move to a single platform developed using both internal and external technological solutions. In addition, we are seeing the benefits of the efficiency plan implemented last year, which is consolidating the improvement of the operating margins of our business,” added Bottazzini.

The company reported EBITDA of $488 million, up 67% from a year earlier, attributing growth in its retail business in Chile, due to the reopening of physical stores, and a larger contribution from the country's banking business.

Bottazini concluded: “In addition to achieving results, we are starting to see how our growth platform is developing, with the marketplace starting to flourish and our payments and logistics platforms becoming increasingly popular.”

Latin America

Falabella

First quarter report