Casas Bahia opens megastore in São Paulo that will function as the network’s laboratory

Casas Bahia is going to inaugurate this Friday (19) a 9,000-square-meter store on the marginal Tietê, in São Paulo, which should function as a laboratory for other physical points of the brand.

The retail network is part of Via, which also has Ponto stores – formerly Pontofrio, the brand to which the sales space previously belonged.

The area, in the Água Branca neighborhood (west side), has consumer experiences such as an area for computer games, a small cinema and selfie booth, as well as places to test products such as bicycles and headphones.

There are also “stores inside the store”, spaces for the brands Wine, wine, Soneda, beauty products, and a cafe by Casa Bauducco.

In the Soneda area, for example, it will be possible to buy hair dye and paint it on the spot, free of charge, in a salon set up in the space.

The store is much larger than usual for Casas Bahia. According to Marcelo Ubriaco, operations director, in large cities it is common for stores with 2,000 square meters, which decrease to up to 500 square meters in small towns.

Consumer behavior in the megastore will be monitored by cameras to understand which areas attract the most customers and for how long.

“The whole issue of the LGPD [Lei Geral de Proteção de Dados] will be respected. We don’t take anybody’s face, we take a heat map of concentration, where customers are concentrating more”, says Roberto Fulcherberguer, president of Via.

In the third quarter of the year, 60% of Via’s sales went through the internet, and the store was designed to take advantage of this flow, in a “figitally”, mixing concepts of physical and digital sales.

Tags with QR codes on items for sale direct consumers to the Casas Bahia website, and sellers, when serving customers in stores, capture the consumer’s contact to keep the conversation going and follow up on the purchase via WhatsApp.

It will also be possible to finalize the purchase directly with the sellers, without going to the cashier, as they will have credit card machines.

When connecting to the wifi network, the company will recognize the customer who is in the store and offer products that he has searched on the site, but has not completed the purchase.

Also by QR code, the customer can access a virtual map with GPS, which guides the navigation through the physical store.

There is an automatic locker that works as a pick-up point for products purchased online. According to Ubriaco, the idea is to use it also as a delivery point for items from other companies and for reverse logistics, as in the case of exchanges.

In an interview with sheet Earlier this month, Fulcherberguer stated that this is the year of the marketplace for the company. Via, which at the beginning of 2021 had 10,000 small retailers, called sellers, now has more than 100,000. The store will test ways to introduce the products of these retailers into the brand’s physical environment.

The marginal Tietê store will be inaugurated with products from ten sellers, and the strategy is to monitor sales to see which items are more identified with the customer and deserve to continue on display. The number of sellers can also increase.

“It’s a laboratory, let’s take good experiences from this store and replicate it in more than a thousand stores that we have”, says the President.

The opening date was scheduled to precede Black Friday, which takes place on the 26th.

The CNC (National Confederation of Commerce of Goods, Services and Tourism) forecasts a 6.5% drop in retail sales on the date, the first decrease in five years. Fulcherberguer, however, claims to be optimistic about the event.

“The entire company prepared for Black Friday, 100% of our stores are last-mile logistics hubs, we are infinitely better prepared in terms of logistics than a year ago,” says Fulcherberguer.

The space will be open 24 hours on the date — it will be Via’s only store to do this.

Inflation may reduce the size of discounts granted, but the Executive says that, despite the price of products being higher, the discounts will be proportionally similar to those practiced on Black Friday in previous years.

The brand’s installment plan, which allows for installment purchases without a credit card, is an advantage in the face of rising prices, he says. “If you pick up inflation in the price of the product, it changes few reais in the portion”, he says.

Via does not reveal the amount invested in the new store, which has 300 employees. “We think it will become a tourist attraction in São Paulo,” says Fulcherberguer.

The company, which closed 100 points of sale between 2020 and the first quarter of this year, plans to finish 2021 with 110 new stores, 50 of which must still open until December.​