Sainsbury's to triple the number of in-house Argos pickup stores
The supermarket's first order of business after acquiring Argos last week.
Sainsbury's certainly isn't dilly-dallying after completing its acquisition of Home Retail Group, owner of Argos and Habitat, last week. The supermarket already has plans for its new purchase, namely tripling the number of Argos "digital stores" housed within Sainsbury's locations. These miniature stores are primarily click-and-collect points, though they also stock thousands of items (but not the full catalogue) for instant purchase, later pickup or home delivery.
The plan is to increase the number of Argos stores-within-stores from 10 to 30 by Christmas, ahead of the holiday rush. Perhaps not a monumental expansion, but the whole point of Sainsbury's acquiring Home Retail Group was to combine retail presences, product ranges and services to create something that would better compete with online rivals. And you have to move quick with new pickup points if you want to convince customers that click-and-collect is more convenient than click-and-wait.
Especially when Amazon is adding new services and expanding others seemingly every month. Sainsbury's and Argos aren't ones to be left behind, though. Argos launched UK-wide same-day deliveries last year, for example, and more recently Sainsbury's began trialing one-hour grocery deliveries in London's Wandsworth borough.
