Challenger to shutter flagship megastore in Funan DigitaLife Mall

It will rely on e-commerce to boost sales.

Patrons of Challenger's megastore in Funan DigitaLife Mall should start saying their goodbyes to the iconic IT retail hub.

After it was revealed that Funan DigitaLife Mall will be closed for renovation for three years starting 3Q16, the Mainboard-listed IT retailer revealed that it is also shuttering its operations at its 53,000 sqft flagship store.

Challenger revealed that it will employ a more ambitious e-commerce strategy to make up for Funan DigitaLife's closure.

“We can stock 10 times more products online than at our megastore, creating a mega mall effect for customers to browse and transact on their mobile devices. We need to go where the customers are,” said Challenger CEO Loo Leong Thye.

Loo added that the idea of a destination specialist shopping mall is not as relevant as being able to provide a wider range of products for customers to browse on-the-go.

“Our physical retail stores will evolve to become more experiential, with our brand partners having better concepts to showcase their products’ capabilities. They will complement our online store, which will serve customers at their own time— not dictated by a mall’s operating hours,” he said.

Unlike smaller retailers who were taken by surprise by Funan’s imminent closure, Loo said that Challenger has been preparing for this event as far back as seven years ago.

“We relocated our entire back office operations to our Ubi Link corporate building in 2009,” he said. 

This was followed by rapid retail expansion, with a total store count at 47 as of 12 December 2015 and three new leases confirmed for the first half of 2016. 

“I have a big sales target of $1 billion to be achieved in five years’ time,” he noted. “This is entirely possible because we have scalable business plans to roll out progressively to regional markets.”