- With an area of 54,000 square meters and an investment of BRL 320 million, the distribution center can separate 5,000 products per hour;
- The unit will absorb the company’s logistical operations that already existed in the city and also incorporate those of São Paulo.
Dafiti Group, which presents itself as a leader in the Latin America’s fashion and lifestyle e-commerce, opens on Thursday, in the Brazilian city of Extrema, its largest distribution center in Latin America. It is seeking to capitalize on the migration of sales to the internet after the COVID-19 pandemic to reduce delivery times and expand its market share.
With an area of 54,000 square meters and an investment of BRL 320 million, the distribution center can separate 5,000 products per hour, which reduces the time to separate parcels from 24 to two hours.
“The customer wants more speed and assertiveness in deliveries,” said Philipp Pavel, chief executive, and co-founder of Dafiti.
The unit will absorb the company’s logistical operations that already existed in the city and also incorporate those of São Paulo, which is being deactivated. The strategy will reduce the number of these distribution centers in Brazil from five to four.
Pavel said that the project had been designed since 2018, but gained greater importance last year due to the pandemic, which economic effects and measures of social isolation have made the fashion sector one of the main victims.
According to the Brazilian Association of the Textile and Clothing Industry (Abit, in Portuguese), clothing sales fell by about 20% last year.
On the other hand, said Pavel, Dafiti gained between 1 and 2 percentage points in market share, following the public’s tendency to buy more through online channels. According to him, this will be an opportunity that the company will seek to take advantage to gain market share since digital purchases account for only 4% of fashion sales in the country.
Created in 2011, Dafiti has nearly 7.7 million customers served from units in Argentina, Chile, and Colombia.
The company is controlled by the Global Fashion Group, a holding company with stakes in fashion websites in emerging countries and listed on the Frankfurt stock exchange.
Other e-commerce companies have also announced large investments in recent months to cope with the leap in demand due to the effects of the pandemic.
Mercado Libre, the largest e-commerce portal in Latin America, announced in November the opening of five new logistics centers in Brazil, doubling the logistics capacity in the country.
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And the US giant Amazon announced the opening of three new logistics centers, the company’s largest logistics expansion since it arrived in Brazil in 2012.
In the case of Dafiti, the concentration of operations in the new center in Extrema also involved calculations of tax gains, although Pavel declined to mention details.
(Translated by LABS)
