DIA Case Study 6 The end is only the beginning Oftentimes, the most difficult part of an ecommerce operation is not launching it, but maintaining and constantly improving it – and DIA can attest this. Despite launching DIA Online in 2018, the operation was not yet the best it could be. For instance, the food and non-food ecommerce operations were still not truly unified, and neither were the online and offline sales channels: general goods were being shipped from distribution centers, whereas food items from only a few brick-and-mortar stores that held a vast assortment of products. This meant that physical customers of those stores and the virtual shoppers buying on DIA Online were in competition for the same limited stock, therefore triggering a high percentage of “out-of-stock” notifications and negatively impacting the user experience. Expansion was needed. DIA already had its eyes set on seamlessly integrating 352 stores into the ecommerce operations and enabling both home delivery and pick-up in-store, thus eliminating friction from the online buyer’s shopping experience. “It is key to be able to create synergy between both channels, taking into account that our operation is mainly based on physical stores.” Fernanda Onzari Nobua, Ecommerce Director of DIA Argentina