Jakarta, Indonesia, 18 August 2020: Fabelio, Indonesia’s leading online furniture retailer today announced plans to expand its business across Indonesia. Fabelio has opened new experience centres across West Java, including Semarang, Surabaya, and Sidoarjo. The company is planning to extend its offerings for home furnishings and interior design services to 1,000 sub-districts throughout Java by the end of 2020, opening up Fabelio to 140 million potential new customers who will soon be able to enjoy same-day deliveries.
Fabelio has seen a marked rise in consumer demand, both in terms of steady traffic at its physical experience centres while maintaining social distancing best practices, as well as a sharp rise in online sales.
Prior to the implementation of large social restrictions (PSBB), Fabelio recorded steady growth in transaction volumes of over 20 per cent. Although it was slowed down due to operational restrictions because of the pandemic, Fabelio recorded the highest online sales transaction from April to July 2020. To meet rising consumer demand, including for same-day deliveries, Fabelio has increased its storage capacity by 80 percent. The company has also signed strategic partnerships with 30 financial service institutions to bring added convenience to consumers, including ten banks (Bank Mandiri, Bank Indonesia and Bank Central Asia) as well as several payment partners.
Fabelio’s CEO and Co-Founder, Marshall Tegar Utoyo, has emphasised the importance of consumer data and making sense of pre-and post-pandemic trends as crucial to Fabelio’s business as a technology-based furniture retailer. He said, “We see pent up demand in West Java for quality designer furniture, compounded with shifting habits as more consumers view offline and buy online. To match surging demand, we have an aggressive expansion plan in place to grow at least 150 percent between June 2020 to the end of this year.”
Upon the lifting of lockdown measures in Indonesia, Fabelio moved quickly to ensure that their experience centres and storage warehouses complied with government-backed health and social distancing regulations. More resources were allocated to support same-day delivery services to customer homes. According to Christian Sutardi, Co-Founder of Fabelio, despite being an online-based retailer, the presence of physical stores itself remains a crucial deciding factor for customers looking to experience and examine their furniture for themselves. The presence of their experience centres in the age of digital retail remains an essential part of their strategy.
“We have recovered relatively fast post-lockdown and have formed strategic partnerships with more than 30 partners in Indonesia, including with ten leading local banks as payment partners. As with any retail product, customers’ need for touch and feel to experience the product for themselves, we are planning to open up a further ten new experience centres and cover the whole island of Java by the end of 2020. Our transaction volumes have increased by almost 50% with customer footfall has been on par compared to pre-COVID period. At the same time, we have acquired more new customers monthly compared to the pre-COVID period,” said Christian
The company has strengthened its leadership team with the hiring of new Chief Operating Officer, Frenky Mulyanto and Arie Wisnu Pradono as Chief Marketing Officer. Frenky is an industry veteran of Indonesia’s furniture industry with more than 20 years of experience in furniture manufacturing and supply for global furniture retailers, while Arie has over ten years experience in digital marketing for multiple industries across Indonesia.
“We are pleased to welcome both Frenky and Arie to the team. Their combined expertise will accelerate the company’s growth in terms of marketing and operations. Their experience in both marketing and retail manufacturing certainly accelerates efforts to realize our mission in providing exceptional customer experience and quality products,” said Marshall.
