ShopBack converts an old school building into a university-like workplace

ShopBack’s newly renovated headquarters fittingly called “Campus” in Pasir Panjang

ShopBack’s Campus houses over 220 employees The property was an old school building managed by the Singapore Land Authority

It is the company’s way of promoting continuous learning amongst its employees.

SINGAPORE

When ShopBack employees go to their newly renovated headquarters fittingly called “Campus” in Pasir Panjang, they go back in time and are treated to school-like spaces where they can hang out and collaborate with each other.

ShopBack employees can instantly get the back-to-school feeling when they enter the office’s assembly hall, which ShopBack’s Country General Manager Fern Nannaphat compares to a university auditorium.

According to Nannaphat, the assembly hall is a huge open space with multiple staircases where people can sit and hang out either during or after working hours. The hall also has a massive screen in the front used during town hall meetings and even has ping pong tables.

“A lot of ideas are coming up around the ping pong table area, at least for my team,” said Nannaphat, adding that it’s one of her favourite areas in the new office.

Apart from the assembly hall, other features of the headquarters that make the space campus-like is its library, which houses books donated by employees, its meeting rooms equipped with whiteboards, and Y-shaped cluster seating arrangements.

“The meeting rooms, ping pong tables, and even the couches resonated with me going back to school,” Nannaphat added.

The property’s history

Nannaphat said the property, which has been refurbished and transformed to become ShopBack’s regional hub, was actually an old school building managed by the Singapore Land Authority.

Turning the old school building into another place of learning, was ShopBack’s way of paying homage to the property’s history.

“This deliberate choice of location underscores the progressive enterprise’s emphasis on continuous learning at Campus,” the company said.

Fern Nannaphat

SPACE WATCH This green open concept makes The Breeze the safest mall in the new normal

Because of its architecture, its occupancy rate quickly returned to 80% when restrictions were eased.

small island stands to large shops.

There is also Kumulo, a creative compound area in an open space consisting of 25 microsites with unique architectural designs in an area of approximately 4,000 square meters that sells a variety of curated local products. On Sundays or holidays, Kumulo often holds Sunday Market events with the concept of a pop-up store.

Visitors can also sit in the atrium area of The Breeze. They do not have to worry about being exposed to heat or rain because there is a large canopy that protects visitors from the weather. Visitors who bring children can also let their children move freely, feed the fish in the pond inside the mall, and bring their pets.

The Breeze uses the concept of 'Mall without Walls'

INDONESIA

When the Indonesia government imposed strict restrictions in the past two years, shopping malls were the first to suffer, with mall goers afraid to be inside enclosed spaces. Because of this, the average mall visit rate fell by 50% in 2020, and 60% in 2021. But for Sinar Mas Land’s The Breeze, recovering from this is a minor issue.With its Mall Without Walls concept, The Breeze's visitor occupancy rate quickly returned to 80% when the government began to ease the restrictions and let the shopping mall open.

“With the open space concept offered by The Breeze, visitor traffic returns much faster than indoor malls in general,” said Yani C. Dewi as Mall Division Head of Sinar Mas Land in an exclusive interview with Retail Asia. “This is kind of a blessing in disguise because when the pandemic hits, people are looking for open spaces for activities.”

The Breeze is located in the BSD

We see malls not only as a full concept for families but more for lifestyle and entertainment

Green Office Park area, Tangerang Regency. The total area of BSD Green Office Park is 25 hectares, of which 13.5 hectares is currently occupied by The Breeze.

The Breeze uses the concept of 'Mall without Walls' where visitors can eat food whilst enjoying direct views of trees, green plants, artificial lakes and the Cisadane river. “We could say The Breeze layout consists of 70% green open space, 20% retail F&B, and 10% entertainment including a bowling alley, cinemas and gyms,” said Yani.

Sneak peek into The Breeze

When visitors come, they can enter from anywhere because The Breeze has an open concept without any partitions and walls. Visitors can go directly to the tenant they are aiming for. Currently there are 90 tenants consisting of F&B, Entertainment & Lifestyle, Sports and Supermarket tenants. The tenants occupy stand-alone buildings with sizes varying from

Open retail concept

The Breeze does not provide an elevator, nor does it have a multifloor building like a mall in general, but a spacious room where visitors can move freely, enjoy the air freely and briefly enjoy outdoor shopping.

“The beginning of the concept that we created at The Breeze came from the management's desire to make something different. We see malls not only as a full concept for families but more for lifestyle and entertainment. When we began to build The Breeze, all the existing malls were using an indoor concept, but we wanted to make it an open space so that we took benchmarks from abroad such as The Groove shopping centre in LA, and Clarke Quay in Singapore,” Yani explained.

The Breeze started operating in 2013 and was designed by JERDE, an architect from the US who has a portfolio of building open retail concepts. As Yani emphasised earlier, green space is an important element because most of The Breeze's space is green space with various trees and plants. Various plants at The Breeze receive periodic maintenance. Those that can't be saved will be replaced with mature trees.

ANALYSIS One chat away: Conversational commerce levels the playing field for brands online

Leaving consumers with unanswered queries can result in $2m missed revenue per day.

ASIA PACIFIC

Fiona Thia, Business Development Director at TMX, was looking for a ring online. She can only roughly estimate her ring size based on the chart posted on the store’s website. Already expecting her order to be hit-or-miss, she then received a message from the brand asking for a photo of her finger to help settle the size and assuring her that, if the item did not fit, she can have it exchanged with no additional payment. Thia also received a follow-up message to check on the item delivered.

In the end, Thia became one of the brand’s satisfied customers. This is conversational commerce at work.

“Conversational commerce focuses on messaging,” Thia told Retail Asia.

It is a strategy that benefits the brand itself because it enables businesses to control their own sales channel strategy and lower the rates of returns. Thia noted that processing returns are costly and they even have to figure out if the item returned could be shelved or just thrown away.

The adoption of conversational commerce rose in popularity as brands expanded their presence online through social media, such as Facebook and Instagram.

“It's really about capitalising on your own followers. That's the reason why we believe that social commerce

Conversational commerce focuses on messaging

Fiona Thia

Mai Endo

is quite an equal playing field for all brands of different sizes and different verticals,” Thia said.

Specific sectors, such as beauty brands, can adopt conversational commerce by relying on messaging applications to sell their products and have live chat advisors to answer queries from customers. Through messaging, customers can send their photos to the brands and have the retail associates on-screen recommend the type of products suitable for them.

For fashion brands, this can also be adopted as some customers could have ordered two sizes at a time, especially when they have no idea about their size, and just have one of them returned as soon as the customers get to fit the items.

The right channel

When opening stores online or in a new channel, Thia said that it is important to have a proper channel strategy, taking into consideration the target audience per channel. She noted that younger customers may be more present via social media, whilst slightly older or more loyal customers might be on the brand’s own marketplace or website.

Data from Sprout Social showed that Gen Z shoppers, or those aged 18 to 40, are the most enthusiastic

Younger customers may be more present via social media to make purchases via social media, particularly in Instagram, TikTok, and Whatsapp.

In Hongkong, one of the best channels to run conversational commerce would be WhatsApp, given that it’s the most used app in the market, AnyMind Group’s Deputy Head of E-Commerce Enablement for Japan, Mai Endo, told Retail Asia.

Based on data from Statista, WhatsApp receives 89,600 monthly downloads, making it the most downloaded free app in the social media category in Hongkong in April 2022.

But for brands present on various platforms, Thia cautioned that they do not “cannibalise” each channel, citing as an example the need for their products to be sold at the same price regardless of the channel.

Botversation alone is a no-no

One of the main purposes of having conversational commerce is to give online consumers the experience they would have in brick-and-mortar stores: having an assistant or staff to guide buyers through their purchase.

Endo, therefore, emphasised the need for both the human and artificial intelligence (AI) elements in conversational commerce.

Leaving consumers to chatbots only will lead to unresolved chats, which, in turn, can result in an average of $2m per day of missed revenue, according to a study by customer experience solutions company, Simplr.ai.

“Chatbots can just recommend a product, but not answer consumers who have doubts on whether they should buy this colour or that colour,” Endo said, adding that as part of their product offering, AnyChat, the company can also provide a customer support person who operates within regular working hours.

Since the platform has yet to have a 24/7 chat support, Endo said operators can instead segment concerns by “tagging,” so the next time a similar inquiry pops up the chatbot can answer on behalf.