E-commerce site Noon to focus on fashion, will launch large private label

The recently announced e-commerce platform Noon.com will focus on fashion brands and will offer “hundreds” of options to shoppers, it revealed on Thursday.

The online shopping platform said in a statement that it will offer “five times” more exclusive fashion brands than its nearest competitor.

In total, it will have more than three million products within the fashion space.

Noon founder Mohamed Alabbar, who is also chairman of Emaar Properties, said: “For too long, consumers who want to buy fashion online in the Middle East have suffered from a lack of variety.

“Fashion will be at the very heart of the Noon experience. We will offer more brands and more products than any of our competitors. We will also launch with a large private label collection that will offer unmatched value to the customer.

“The sheer scale of our offering will also allow us to provide our customers with prices that will be impossible to beat.”

Announced in November last year, Noon is promising 20 million products when it comes online this month covering fashion, books, home and garden, electronics, sports and outdoor, health and beauty, personal care, toys, kids and baby products.

It will feature mass-market megabrands and discount giants and pledges to have “the fastest delivery times” through its in-house delivery platform.

The company is backed by a $1bn initial investment from Alabbar and other Gulf investors and the Saudi Public Investment Fund, which is a 50 per cent shareholder.

Noon will initially launch in the UAE and Saudi Arabia, but plans to soon launch across the Middle East region. It aims to grow online sales in the region from 2 per cent of the total market ($3bn), to 15 per cent ($70bn) within a decade.

Read: Dubai’s Alabbar to “dominate” Middle East e-commerce with Saudi-backed platform

Late last year, Alabbar also has signed a joint venture deal with international online luxury fashion retailer Yoox Net-A-Porter (YNAP) to set up an online luxury retail business in the Middle East.

The JV – worth a combined 130m euros ($138.5m), will be owned 60 per cent by YNAP and 40 per cent by Alabbar’s Symphony Investments.

It will manage all of the group’s existing multi-brand online stores in the region including Net-A-Porter, Mr Porter, Yoox and The Outnet – as well as, in agreement with the brands, certain existing and future online stores that have significant business potential in the Middle East.

Yoox and the Outnet will launch in 2018 while Net-A-Porter and Mr.Porter will begin operations in 2019.

Read more: Dubai’s Alabbar in $138.5m JV deal with luxury e-retailer Yoox Net-A-Porter

Also read: Gulf e-commerce begins its next chapter