Five years ago, the shoe retail group Sabu Schuh & Marketing GmbH launched its concept of a regional search engine for over 1100 stationary sales outlets of Sabu partner companies with the Sabu.de platform. The aim was to convert regional search queries into sales leads for stationary retailers, taking into account the ROPO effect – i.e. consumers who research online and buy in-store.
While the group made a conscious decision at the time not to focus the platform on e-commerce functionality, but to make the stationary shoe trade and the respective product portfolios visible to customers via a “digital shop window”, it has now changed extended this functionality.
Since the launch of Sabu.de 2.0 on August 3, 2022, retailers can now also sell online. This should “enable small and medium-sized retailers in particular a simple and sustainable entry into e-commerce and the omnichannel world,” the association said in a statement.
“Sabu GmbH, as a classic association with a full-service offer for its members, makes e-commerce manageable for all entrepreneurs, regardless of company size, if they get involved. An accompanying goal is to enable our affiliated companies to fully exploit all the possibilities of the platform. Closely linked to the idea of the Sabu.de marketplace is to offer retailers a basis for modern online marketing, online communication and retailer interaction. Sabu.de is living multi-channelling”, explains Sabu Managing Director Stephan Krug.
This is achieved by connecting the marketplace presence and the individual shops of the participating retailers, since they can operate their own shop under a freely selectable domain without additional effort. In doing so, Sabu wants to “use the strengths of the association in the digital area and at the same time enable retailers to remain individual and flexible”.
In the spirit of its cooperative promotional mandate, Sabu assumes the costs for setting up and operating the marketplace, providing image and product data, search engine optimization, payment providers, billing and label creation and marketing the platform. There is also the possibility of automated interfaces to Google Shopping, Idealo and Facebook for all members.
However, the association emphasizes that despite the new e-commerce functionality, personal contact and the individual appearance of the dealers are always in the foreground: “E-commerce is seen as a service or service of stationary trade, while the way in the stationary shop is open to customers at any time,” summarizes the association.