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| Feng charts Shopee's growth in Southeast Asia and Taiwan since its launch late last year. |
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| Source: Shopee. Feng shows off the Shopee e-commerce platform on a screen replicating what is on his phone. |
Shopee, Garena’s* e-commerce platform, today launched two initiatives—Shopee Free Shipping, now in beta, and Shopee University, at its inaugural Biannual Press Conference. The moves mark the beginning of a major growth strategy that the mobile-first social marketplace is commencing on for the months ahead that includes streamlining buyer and seller experiences as well as building a community around Shopee.
At the event, Chris Feng, CEO, Shopee, who is also the Head of Mobile Business, Southeast Asia and Taiwan for Garena, disclosed that the company aims to build a more holistic and robust customer-to-customer (C2C) social marketplace to further empower individuals to buy and sell on its platform. These plans come on the back of Garena’s recent announcement that it raised US$170 million in Series D funding, to be used on accelerating its regional market leadership across its digital content, payment, and e-commerce platforms, including Shopee.
“Since the official launch** version of our platform, Shopee has seen tremendous growth with our sellers, buyers, product listings and orders now in the millions. To ensure this growth rate continues, we are committed to invest more in constantly enhancing our ecosystem through innovation and developing initiatives such as Shopee Free Shipping to empower individuals, especially budding entrepreneurs, to start their business journey on our platform by first removing the hassles of shipping costs," said Feng. "This in turn elevates mobile commerce standards and further strengthens our regional market leadership position, bringing us closer to achieve our aim in becoming Southeast Asia’s mobile commerce destination of choice.”
Shopee has seen 10 million downloads, 12 million product listings as well as 1.2 million social media followers across the region. Singapore accounts for 500,000 of the downloads and 300,000 of the listings as well as 600,000 of the social media followers - all in just a few months**.
Ander Orcasitas, Managing Director of Shopee Singapore said, “Shopee University is an entrepreneurship development initiative aimed at empowering individuals to grow their businesses on Shopee and enhance their e-commerce management skills. With this new curriculum developed based on the best practices of Shopee’s top sellers’ entrepreneurship skills, we are very excited to be able to impart valuable knowledge to other sellers within the community. With more in-depth topics around Shopee’s extensive features as well as tips on online marketing and photography, we are confident that these classes will benefit our sellers greatly.”
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| Shopee free shipping goes into beta. Registration is open. |
Shopee Free Shipping (beta)
With Shopee as a free-to-use platform***, Shopee Free Shipping further lowers barriers to entry for all participants. The beta for Shopee Free Shipping will reimburse shipping costs**** for sellers who register in-app for the initiative, enabling to pass on the savings to buyers.
Shopee University
Shopee University aims to help sellers develop business skills around e-commerce. It will also jumpstart a community for sellers so that they can share their experiences with each other. "We want to form a community behind this ecosystem where people can really learn and share with the other sellers," said Feng.
The revamped curriculum was developed based on the best practices of Shopee’s top sellers’ entrepreneurship skills. Compared to the curriculum at the soft-launch in December the new offering features more in-depth topics including online marketing and photography. These classes are organised every two weeks and members of the public as well as Shopee sellers can register to attend, as well as receive more information in-app.
Shopee University aims to help sellers develop business skills around e-commerce. It will also jumpstart a community for sellers so that they can share their experiences with each other. "We want to form a community behind this ecosystem where people can really learn and share with the other sellers," said Feng.
The revamped curriculum was developed based on the best practices of Shopee’s top sellers’ entrepreneurship skills. Compared to the curriculum at the soft-launch in December the new offering features more in-depth topics including online marketing and photography. These classes are organised every two weeks and members of the public as well as Shopee sellers can register to attend, as well as receive more information in-app.
Shopee prides itself on ease of use. Sellers can list products for sale in a handful of steps using their mobile phones – snap a picture, fill in product details and set the price, upload the listing, and share with friends. A shop can be set up in less than 30 seconds. For peace of mind, payments are held in escrow - buyers' payments are held by Shopee and only released to the seller when the buyer sends an update that the item was received in good condition. There are no listing fees and no commissions for sellers. Product enhancements made to Shopee’s platform since its official launch version include:
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| A summary of key product innovations introduced since the launch: improvements in social features, discovery - being able to find items that would be of interest to the buyer - and more help for sellers. |
A Live Chat feature supports person-to-person (P2P) conversations
Search now supports hashtags so users can easily discover what is trending as well as the latest deals (trending hashtags of the day included #koreanfashion #nyx, and #flyknit)
The home page allows users to view real-time updates from sellers they follow as well as sellers recommended by Shopee
Improved discovery
The Daily Discover feature recommends items a visitor might like based on browsing and purchase history
A two-level Category feature allows users to search and discover products more easily
New Search Filters enable users to explore products by discounts and surfaces products with free shipping
Product Boosting feature allows sellers to push their products to the top of a product category
Featured Sellers provides greater exposure for selected sellers with different categories of products. A one-click follow-all function allows buyers to pursue categories of interest
Chat Response function indicates how responsive a seller is in terms of how many responses, and response times
Product Variation allows sellers to manage multiple models of a single product under one listing, such as the same product in different sizes and colours
Seller management console
Seller Centre allows sellers to more easily manage their products and orders, as well as support their customers. This feature is designed for web usage and is batch-oriented, as against updating products one by one on a mobile device
Logistics
Integrated Logistics now includes additional support from Shopee Singapore’s third-party logistics provider Ninja Van
Seller management console
Seller Centre allows sellers to more easily manage their products and orders, as well as support their customers. This feature is designed for web usage and is batch-oriented, as against updating products one by one on a mobile device
Logistics
Integrated Logistics now includes additional support from Shopee Singapore’s third-party logistics provider Ninja Van
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| Top sellers on Shopee share their experiences: from left, Wong, Lee and Foo. |
Lee Yi Hui from HushSG, one of Shopee's top sellers, is focused on e-commerce full-time. Lee did not start using Shopee immediately after finding out about it, he disclosed, but decided to give it a try as the platform added more
functions. "It worked quite well for us," he said. "We started to list more and more of our
products on Shopee, and have quite a huge chunk of revenue from there."
Brydan Foo, GameProSG, deals mainly with PC gaming peripherals and laptops, which typically has a niche customer base. Foo said Shopee had helped him locate more customers. "They (Shopee) don't just view us as just a seller on a
platform," he added. "They have a strong working relationship. I have learned about e-commerce from Shoppee. This is
why I enjoy using Shopee as my preferred platform."
Lee added that with Shopee it is quite easy
for a small seller to begin uploading and selling. "There's not much
paperwork involved. Even if you're not a full time seller, you can just take a
picture, take it in well-lighted areas, and immediately start selling, If you
are a serious seller you can upload your products en masse - that's one concern for those who have a lot of products, it's very tedious to list
your products one by one... a lot of
platforms are still manual, that's what got me started," he said.
He added that Shopee's community is particularly responsive. "Shopee has the
most reviews. The community is very involved and really give feedback after
they purchase," he said.
Valerie Wong of ReverendRabbit, which sells men's apparel, praised Shopee's initiatives for sellers. "Sellers get to meet one another, it creates a whole seller ecosystem," she said. "It's not like you're alone. The
more sellers there are, the more people will be shopping in the
industry."
All three sellers noted that Shopee has been very responsive
to feedback as well.
Interested?
*'Garena' refers to Garena Interactive Holding.
**Shopee was officially launched in Singapore in November 2015.
***Shopee is a free-to-use platform with no hidden costs.
****Shipping costs applies to normal mail which is capped at S$2 per shipment.
****Shipping costs applies to normal mail which is capped at S$2 per shipment.
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