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ifestyle retail giant PT Mitra Adiperkasa (MAP) has announced its foray into the e-commerce sector with the launch of MAP E-Mall service, aiming to take advantage of the burgeoning trend of e-commerce usage in Indonesia.

Developed over six to eight months, the MAP E-Mall marketplace aims to deliver '€œan omni-channel'€ experience to consumers and access to around 150 global brands that the group manages, says MAP group chief executive officer VP Sharma.

'€œThe new marketplace will allow MAP customers to access brands that we have exclusive rights to sell online. MAP E-Mall will also be a pioneer in the country in both online and offline spaces, as we are the only online marketplace that keeps our inventory within our own stores,'€ he explained on Thursday.

MAP is the retail group behind numerous notable retail brands in the food and beverage, lifestyle and sports sectors including Starbucks, Marks & Spencer, Nike, Adidas, Lacoste, Mango, Hasbro, Samsonite and many more.

Sharma said the company had previously experimented with e-commerce, two years ago, through their planetsports.net website, which mostly catered to sporting goods store Planet Sports. But due to the relative small size of the market at that time, it eventually decided not to invest heavily in that sector.

'€œIt made no sense to invest so much into a sector that didn'€™t contribute much to revenue at that time. The difference now is that we have accumulated more knowledge and experience regarding the e-commerce sector. That is why we feel that the right time to enter the market is now,'€ he said.

However, he admitted that online sales still contributed less than 1 percent of their total revenue.

Responding to the size of the e-commerce market in Indonesia, and the number of competitors MAP has to face in the relatively new market, Sharma said MAP'€™s approach was different from that of other online marketplaces as they were aiming for different market segments, targeting mostly the middle to upper-middle class.

'€œMAP has many exclusive brands that no other marketplace can offer. This exclusivity, and the fact that MAP E-Mall is also intertwined with our brick-and-mortar stores, makes our marketplace different from the rest,'€ he said.

The group plans to release a mobile app for the MAP E-Mall sometime in the second quarter of 2016. Up to 65 percent of MAP'€™s online traffic comes from mobile. MAP'€™s online marketing strategy, particularly on social media, will also be intensified as the group describes it as '€œcrucial'€, providing the best way to show different options to their customers.

Meanwhile, MAP director Susana Latif said the group would contribute up to 20 percent of their annual capital expenditure (capex) to their e-commerce venture. For 2016, the company will allocate up to Rp 500 billion in capex in total, with around Rp 100 billion going into the development of MAP E-Mall.

The group earned Rp 12 trillion in revenue in 2015. After 25 years of operation, MAP now has around 2,000 physical stores scattered around 60 cities in Indonesia.