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T Astra Graphia, a subsidiary of diversified conglomerate Astra International, is developing an online shop, aiming to increase its sales of office equipment and services and other products.

The website, axiqoe.com, is expected to launch next year.

Astra Graphia corporate communication executive Hari Mulyoraharjo said the e-commerce address, axiqoe.com, was a portfolio of PT Astragraphia Xprins Indonesia, an Astra Graphia subsidiary that deals in office equipment.

'€œCurrently the project is under construction but we'€™ll share details the features soon,'€ he told The Jakarta Post on Saturday.

Astra Graphia finance and accounting chief Panji Nurfirman said the company had spent around Rp 50 billion (US$3.6 million) on developing the system.

The website currently displays items for sale ranging from office supplies and electronics to groceries.

'€œThe online shop will display thousands of items, initially for business-to-business, but will surely touch on business-to-consumer [sales] later on,'€ he said recently.

'€œThe plan is that Axiqoe will be a retail channel for various products. It'€™ll will host the [Astra International] e-commerce brand and the conglomerate market,'€ he added.

Astra International also has several other subsidiaries in various fields, including the automotive industry, financial services, heavy equipment, mining, agribusiness, infrastructure, logistics and information technology.

The new business will benefit from the group'€™s established field expertise and customer base. Astra Graphia itself has 30,000 customers, according to Nurfirman.

The company has 29 branches, 89 service points and serves 514 cities and regencies. It also deals in hardware and software services, presently with 285 engineer customers and 920 information technology (IT) consultants.

The drop in local purchasing power, commodities prices and decreased auto sales due to the lackluster economy, has forced Astra group to pay more attention to optimizing its processes, and partly led it to digital sales.

E-commerce transaction values have seen a staggering growth of around 100 percent per year for the past few years, even though users only account for 1 percent of the total population of Indonesia. The e-commerce market is expected to soar to $25 billion by next year, from $4 billion in 2012.

Other offline businesses that have gone online include Matahari department store, that recently opened mataharimall.com; logistics company JNE that has opened an online food ordering service called Pesona Nusantara; and many more.

Expanding into the digital world for Astra Graphia is also an important step to avoid slow revenue growth. Last year, the company saw only 1 percent revenue growth, a far cry from its 10 percent growth in 2013 and 20 percent in 2012.

This year, Astra Graphia'€™s revenue up to September had grown 13.48 percent year-on-year, from Rp 1.4 trillion to Rp 1.6 trillion.

At the same time, document-solutions sales, such as photocopiers, fax machines, paper shredders and the like, still contributed the majority, 65.58 percent, of the company'€™s revenue. The remaining 31.42 percent came mainly from IT sales and services.

Despite the growth in revenue, up to September, the Astra subsidiary saw an 8.18 percent decrease yoy in profit, from Rp 174.4 billion last year to Rp 160.1 billion this year.

The higher profit last year was caused by the success of its joint venture PT Astra Graphia Information Technology that brought in Rp 42.3 billion in profit.

With the new online project, the company hopes to increase its proportion of IT sales. (rbk)