Watsons taps Ele.me platform for ‘ship from store’ service

Consumers in China can now make urgent purchases from their local Watsons stores through Alibaba’s Ele.me platform, shipping to their doors in less than an hour.

The Hong Kong-based drugstore chain is offering 1,700 items from its 10,000-plus products on the platform. Nearly 1,600 of its bricks and mortar stores across 230 Chinese cities are now onboard, with plans to expand to 2,500 stores by the end of the year.

“For us to achieve rapid growth in the market, we need to enable merchants comprehensively and sustainably. Our ecosystem synergies provide a unique advantage, but it’s about utilising resources in a way that maximises that synergy — extending the benefits to even more users,” says Ele.me CEO Wang Lei.

Teaming up with Alibaba’s logistics arm, Cainiao Network, in March has helped Watsons deliver in as fast as two hours by fulfilling online orders at the store nearest to the consumer, rather than a warehouse. And its latest collaboration with Alibaba is doubling the speed.

The pair began to collaborate on New Retail applications in the personal care and beauty domain in March. Three months later, the retailer launched about 1,000 test stores nationwide, which saw sales grow by an average of more than 115% month-over-month in September.