Dollarama launching online store in Quebec

Beginning tomorrow morning, bargain hunters in Quebec will be able to stock up on their favourite Dollarama merchandise when the discount retailer launches its first e-commerce website in a pilot project that will include home deliveries in the province.

The pilot project will only offer deliveries to home addresses in Quebec. Those customers will also be able to purchase items from the online store and pick up their orders from a third-party pickup site.

Dollarama spokesperson Lyla Radmanovich said the company has a partnership with UPS, which will give Quebec shoppers the ability to ship products to its various locations and pick them up there for free.

However, Radmanovich said Dollarama customers will still have to pay an $18 fixed shipping fee on every order.

Before customers start planning all of the $1 and $2 items they will put in their virtual shopping cart, Radmanovich stressed that the e-commerce site will be for bulk transactions only.

“It really is targeting small businesses or people looking to buy in bulk,” she told CTVNews.ca in a telephone interview from Montreal.

That means that products will be sold in bulk units instead of individually. For example, Radmanovich said a case of pencils will clearly state how many pencils it contains and customers can then select how many cases they would like to purchase.

In terms of what merchandise will be offered online, Radmanovich said there will be a “selection” of approximately 1,000 items that are regularly sold in stores.

“It’s not the full selection,” she said.

For comparison, Radmanovich said there are approximately 4,000 regular products and 700 seasonal items in a Dollarama store at any given time.

When asked how long the pilot project in Quebec is expected to last, Radmanovich said they don’t have a timeline for that yet. She said the Montreal-based dollar store chain will evaluate how the deliveries operate in the province before it expands the service to the rest of the country.

“You’ll have to wait and see, but obviously as that next step approaches, Dollarama will communicate it,” she said.

For now, Radmanovich said the company is hoping to address a need among small businesses and a subset of customers looking to buy in bulk.

The e-commerce pilot project has been in the works for two years, according to Radmanovich. Dollarama has been refocusing its priorities of late to compete with online giant Amazon and Asian retailers Miniso and Muji. Earlier this month, the company said it would focus its attention on its lowest-priced items. The announcement came as the discount retailer reported $133.5 million in earnings in its latest quarter, an increase of $3.4 million from the same time the year before.