FJ Benjamin sets up advisory board to integrate online and offline retail

Fashion and lifestyle retailer F J Benjamin has set up an advisory board to help the company integrate its bricks-and-mortar stores and online sales channels.

The omni-channel advisory board will advise F J Benjamin’s management on strengthening links between new digital channels and the group’s network of over 200 stores and 1,500 points of sale in Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia, the company said in a statement on Tuesday.

The advisory board comprises domain experts as well as senior F J Benjamin executives. The domain experts are: Marcelo Wesseler, former CEO of SingPost e-commerce and now managing partner of e-commerce platform developer Codem; Jon Sugihara, head of global strategic partnerships at Google; and Tito Costa, chief marketing officer at Zalora.

“We are pursuing an omnichannel strategy where we hope to harness our existing customer database in the region, which should have the twin impact of both optimising our regional network as well as growing our business volume online,” said F J Benjamin director of corporate strategy Ben Benjamin, who is also on the advisory board.

“We have observed the online ecosystem evolve rapidly over the past two years, including last mile logistics, payments and mobile commerce, and feel that the time is now ripe to pursue an economically viable business model that will integrate the online ecosystem with our retail infrastructure.”

F J Benjamin manages over 20 brands – incuding Guess, Marc Jacobs, Nautica and Swarovski – and operates 226 stores.