Supermarket chain Iceland is to re-open its online store – closed six years ago after the break-up of its parent company – following rising demand from customers.
Iceland pioneered online supermarket shopping back in 1996, well before Tesco, Sainsbury’s and other big supermarket chains launched their web operations, but the company shut up shop in 2006 when its then-owner, the Big Food Group, split.
Co-founder and chief executive Malcolm Walker claims the web operation had been “slightly profitable”, but stressed that, at the time, the firm needed to focus on the core business.
The decision to re-open the store was taken just three months ago, Walker said. “We had a fairly successful online business in 1996, which was the first national grocery online delivery service in the UK.”
That was well before the advent of broadband and universal internet access. “Now, most of our customers have computers and it seems a logical thing to do,” added Walker.
The key to the new site will be a “Fisher-Price” level of simplicity, Walker claims. A pilot project is planned for early 2013 and the business will only be launched following sign-off from Walker.
Iceland’s business model will be based on conventional store-based picking and packing. “The secret, of course, is that we have already got 80% of the infrastructure in place. We have got the ‘picking’ centres, which is 800 stores; we have got 1,200 home delivery vehicles, making 170,000 deliveries a week; and there are the customers who buy in-store and have the products delivered,” said Walker.
“So we’ve got all that already there and all we need to do is put on the front-end – the website,” he added.
