Sheng Siong Group

[vesfreq]

For "dry goods", yes the online e-commerce sites can be a competition to the brick & mortar supermarkets.

But for fresh produce like vegetables, fruits, seafood & poultry, I think the mass majority would still prefer the old-fashion brick & mortar supermarkets. Eg you have paid for the fruits & fish online, when delivered, you think they look a little 'aged', not up to your ideal expectation of freshness, but definitely not rotten & definitely still edible. Do you have a legal right to demand a refund & refuse to accept the goods? How much hassle do you have to go through to demand a refund?

Looks like I am able to answer this question now as last week Redmart delivered a packet of moldy sweet potatoes. Likely due to poor storage or handling. Just a call to Redmart customer service and my wife told me the amount for the sweet potatoes was refunded immediately. Took about 1 to 2 minutes to resolve unlike those telcos where you have to wait sometimes 10 mins for them to pick up the call.

What is quite challenging for these e-commerce sites is that they may lack the continuity in terms of the support for fresh produce. 

From what I understand about redmart, it basically is in the biz of fulfillment. It carries little to no inventory and requisites all inventory on just in time basis. For them to succeed, its really a question about how efficient they can get in bringing the commodities from "farm to fork". Not exactly an easy process. The delivery of orders is prone to various issues, including driver's sending wrong goods or taking lease. These are real issues, which (thankfully) SSG does not need to worry over as much. 

SSG directly procures much of its goods from the growers and farms, which keeps costs largely managed. Their cost leadership contributes to wider margins. I'm not sure if this is the case for redmart. But, if redmart is not able to have this kind of advantage in terms of procurement, it will always have a limitation as to how much more value can they deliver to their customers without stressing the bottomline margins. However much e-commerce remains attractive to certain consumer segments, those supermarkets (with physical shop front) will tend to have its own loyal following. 

Just some thoughts.