“It will be a test of the multichannel shopper theory and will be more of a destination where you can pick up a product you’ve ordered online, make a return or buy the product you saw available online,” Cooper said.

“People shop online, they research online, they shop offline and sometimes they research offline and then go and buy online. What we’re providing is an additional channel for customers.

Although multi-channel retailing is quite advanced in overseas markets like the US and UK, dStore is only the second Australian etailer to break-through into traditional retailing.

dStore’s first concept store will focus on homewares and will include a warehouse facility and internet kiosks.

“We’ll have people helping customers through the kiosk purchasing behaviour so we can educate them. We’re looking at quite a different retailing concept and we know behaviours are sometimes hard to change and we’ll be devoting a fair bit of energy to that.

“The online market in Australia hasn’t been stirred up by launches by traditional merchants. We’ll become a traditional merchant by going offline to fill that gap out there. We’d be happy to take the leadership position in that whole multichannel marketing space,” he said.

dStore also announced the company is rolling out new technology in the personalisation space in the next 12 months.

Disclosure: Michael Hellwig (editor) is a Marketing Analyst for dStore.com.au