TOP BRASS Penshoppe Group founders and top executives Alice and Bernie Liu
Across the state-of-the-art GABC Distribution Center within the headquarters of the Penshoppe Group in Quezon City, 240 Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) are whirring about at their full speed, helping pick and sort through thousands of products either to fulfill orders on e-commerce sites or to top up inventory of the group’s over 1,000 retail stores across the country.
These AMRs were not moving as much at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic that saw the opening and closing of branches in step with the changing mobility restrictions. But they are now making up for the lost time and are operating 24/7 to service pent-up demand for the Penshoppe Group’s wide array of products under the Penshoppe, OXGN, Regatta, Memo and ForMe brands.The latest addition to the list is Bocu Lifestyle, which was first launched in 2021 in the e-commerce space but has since been given its brick-and-mortar branch at the SM Mall of Asia, offering fashion pieces that complement the de rigueur minimalist lifestyle.
CONVEYOR The state-of-the-art center has an area dedicated for the fulfillment of e-commerce orders. —CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
That the Penshoppe Group has been able to quickly ramp up operations to meet the spike in demand for its product line that spans clothes to accessories and footwear it attributes in part to the early and substantial P2-billion investment in the 20,000-square-meter GABC Distribution Facility, the first of its kind in the Philippines, as part of the rethink of its entire logistics and supply chain system.
The three-story GABC Distribution Center project kicked off in May 2016 followed by groundbreaking in June 2018 and formal opening in February 2021, a year into the devastating pandemic. The group is understandably proud of the facility as it represents not just an investment in supply chain innovation to ensure the smooth and effective flow of merchandise from supply source to the stores and consumers. More importantly, it is an investment in the Penshoppe Group’s future as a market leader in the local retail sector that enables its customers to find what they want, where they want. According to Penshoppe executive vice president and chief retail officer Alice Liu, the group decided to bite the bullet and invest in the modern facility because they saw as early as 2015 that their old, manual way of distributing products across its branches was no longer cost-efficient. It was slow and more prone to mistakes that it could not afford as it was competing in a highly competitive retail environment.
Ramping up
The Penshoppe Group also deems the distribution facility crucial to fulfill its ambition to conquer the e-commerce space and thereby ramp up its capability to be a formidable player in all retail channels.
The investment is certainly paying off, as seen in the sales spike over the last quarter of 2022, with Filipinos heading to the malls with a vengeance for their long-delayed retail therapy.
Penshoppe Group founder and CEO Bernie Liu shares that the Penshoppe Group’s sales have “definitely improved” in 2022 over 2021 to the point that it breached prepandemic sales levels earlier than expected.
“Giving credit to where credit is due, the entire group worked hard to prepare for this Christmas season—the merchandise collection is among the best we have seen so far. The new stores we have been opening all over the country are world class and deserve the premium spaces they are in now, and our supply chain investments have elevated our efficiency levels to almost 100 percent,” Liu says.“The modern distribution center has been a critical factor in our ability to serve our customers the best possible way,” Liu adds. Propelled by its enviable growth momentum from the last quarter of 2022, and encouraged by projections that the country’s economy will continue to grow and thus fully recover from the ravages wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Penshoppe Group indeed has valid reasons to look forward to an even better 2023. INQ