St Petersburg, 3 October 2018 – X5 Retail Group ("X5" or the "Company"), a leading Russian food retailer (LSE and MOEX ticker: FIVE), announces the launch of its Perekrestok online supermarket in St Petersburg, in line with its omnichannel business development strategy. St Petersburg and its surrounding communities are the second region (after Moscow and part of the Moscow region) where goods purchased online on perekrestok.ru are delivered.
Online orders will be handled at the city’s first dark store. Dark stores are a new format for the Company, and are only accessible to personnel responsible for picking and delivering perekrestok.ru online orders. The total area of the no-customer store is over 7,000 sq m.
With some 15,000 SKUs, Perekrestok online offers St Petersburg customers a similar product range to what is available at brick-and-mortar supermarkets. At first, the online store will have a headcount of around 200 people and a fleet of 20 delivery vans, with more to be added as the number of orders grows.
Denis Vasiliev, E-commerce Director at Perekrestok, said: "E-commerce has significant growth potential both in Russia as a whole and in St Petersburg. Existing customers have been buying more, complementing an inflow of new patrons. Our online service has received high praise from our Moscow customers, with the average NPS reaching 82% in Q2 2018."
The launch of Perekrestok online in April 2017 coincided with the opening of the supermarket format’s first hybrid store in Moscow, which functions as both a regular supermarket and a warehouse for picking online orders. Currently, it services up to 2,000 online customers per day, with the average ticket exceeding RUB 3,000. In August, the first Perekrestok dark store opened in Moscow, ramping up the capacity of the city’s online supermarket by 3.5 times.