Sellers on Shopify can now offer natural and organic grocery products through a new app from GreenDropShip.
The GreenDropShip app is the first that allows Shopify (NYSE: SHOP) sellers to add grocery items to their online stores, the company said. Sellers can add over 20,000 items to their stores, including natural and organic grocery, body care, supplements and household products.
“We created the GreenDropShip app to offer Shopify merchants a way to have seamless automation. It saves time and spares online resellers the expense and hassle of hiring a developer to build a solution, so Shopify merchants can save thousands in development costs,” said co-founder Allen Kaplun.
Data from Inmar Intelligence found that 78.7% of consumers shopped for groceries online since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, with 56.7% increasing their online grocery shopping.
The survey also found that 51.4% of consumers purchased groceries from Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) during the pandemic, up 32% year-over-year. Brands saw a 117% increase in direct-to-consumer grocery sales.
“Consumers continue to look to e-commerce options for their groceries due to the convenience factor,” said Jim Hertel, senior vice president of analytics at Inmar Intelligence. “This trend is likely to continue even as restrictions are lifted, as shoppers have grown accustomed to this routine. Today’s shoppers expect convenient and personalized engagements in every interaction, across all touchpoints. Retailers and brands must work to seamlessly deliver meaningful experiences that delight shoppers and drive loyalty.”
While February data showed online grocery shopping declined from January, it still remains at an elevated level.
The February Brick Meets Click/Mercatus Grocery Shopping Survey found that online grocery sales in February fell 14% from January to $8 billion. The delivery/pickup segment captured $6.1 billion of sales, with ship-to-home accounting for $1.8 billion, the survey said. January recorded $9.3 billion in total sales with $7.1 billion in delivery/pickup.
Read: Online grocery shopping shows decline in February
“February’s overall sales contraction was expected,” David Bishop, a partner in Brick Meets Click, a grocery tracking firm, said. “While January’s sales performance set a record high for online grocery sales, we also saw January’s shopper sentiment related to completing a grocery delivery or pickup order within the next month drop by approximately 10%, and that is what happened, albeit at a slightly higher rate, in February.”
Even as sales may be subsiding from recent highs, sellers on Shopify have seen growth in the past year. The company said brands on its platform had sales of $5.1 billion on Black Friday and Cyber Monday in 2020, a 76% increase over 2019’s performance. Shopify’s subscription solutions revenues jumped 53% and total revenues increased 94% year-over-year to $977.7 million.
GreenDropShop’s app allows sellers on Shopify to increase product offerings. The company connects sellers to products at wholesale prices and handles order fulfillment, sending items direct to consumers.
Click for more Modern Shipper articles by Brian Straight.
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