The Ocado success story from down under - how Coles has turned around its e-commerce strategy into the black

Retail automation platform provider Ocado has had more than its fair share of negative news to deal with in recent years - see diginomica passim. Flagship customers such as Kroger and Sobey’s have cut back on their deployments of the firm’s tech after failing to see expected ROI.

But there’s an exception to this seeming trend in the form of Australian grocery giant Coles, which has seen its e-commerce strategy deliver growing benefits over the past few years on the back of its Ocado tie-up, with e-commerce now accounting for nearly 16% of total sales and scaling profitably.

Founded in 1914 with a slogan of "nothing over 2/6”, Coles today operates over 800 supermarkets throughout Australia. Its Coles Online offering was launched in 1999, but remained loss-making for many years. In March 2019, the deal with Ocado was signed, with Coles CEO Leah Weckert saying:

We sought the...

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