Watsons leverages Cainiao online fulfilment offering

Hong Kong-based drugstore chain Watsons has become the first multi-national retailer to sign on to Cainiao Network’s ‘ship from store’ service in China.

This delivers in as fast as two hours by fulfilling online orders at the store nearest to the consumer. It is available to users of Alibaba Group’s B2C shopping site, Tmall, who live within a 3km radius of a Watsons location. Similar to Hema supermarket, they choose a location, then the store’s staff collect the items for a courier to deliver. Cainiao President Wan Lin says: “The ways that technology has enabled commerce has accelerated a fundamental change in the logistics sector. Linking online with offline, couriers have now shortened the way we calculate delivery times from days to minutes.”

Over 200 Watsons stores in Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Dongguan offer the service. The plan is to eventually expand nationwide to 3,000 branches in over 430 cities. Until now, only domestic retailers, such as the Alibaba-owned Intime department store and packaged-food chain Zhou Hei Ya, had partnered with Cainiao to leverage the offering in China.