Shopee Malaysia collaborates with Pos Malaysia for fulfilment

Shopee Malaysia is collaborating with the national courier delivery service Pos Malaysia, to give all sellers on the platform the ability to ship their sold items for free.

Shopee, a mobile-first social marketplace with over 12 million users in the region, is a free-to-use online customer-to-customer (C2C) platform. Launched in December 2015, Shopee aims to empower entrepreneurs, both individuals and businesses, to buy and sell safely and securely on mobile. In Malaysia Shopee has seen more than a million downloads of its app within six months.

Shopee already has no listing fee and no commission fee. The Shopee Free Shipping Program further lowers barriers to entry for all by making buying and selling easier as the cost of shipping is removed.

The beta version was launched in early May to selected sellers through several batches to monitor the growth and engagement for the Free Shipping Program. The programme grants sellers a capped subsidy for deliveries of items to West Malaysia and East Malaysia respectively.

“Since the launch of the Shopee Free Shipping Program, we have seen tremendous growth on our platform. The daily orders of most of our sellers have doubled and even tripled in some instances,” said Ian Ho, Regional Managing Director of Shopee.

Randy, owner of the zmobile store on Shopee, says the programme has benefitted sellers. "Before joining the programme, my customers are mostly from Kuala Lumpur. But thanks to the Free Shipping programme, now I have buyers from East Malaysia and my sales have increased by five times in three months,” he remarked.

On top of generating tremendous benefits to sellers, this programme is also attractive for buyers. “This prestigious partnership will also help buyers across Malaysia to shop and not worry about paying for shipping fees on our platform,” Ho added.

Dato’ Mohd Shukrie Mohd Salleh, Pos Malaysia’s Group Chief Executive Officer said, “The collaboration between Pos Malaysia and Shopee is a significant milestone for us to delve and tap further into new business opportunities, especially in the e-commerce sector. With the launch of our e-Commerce Hub and the Pos Laju EziBox, the entrepreneurs on Shopee would now be able to benefit from greater convenience by having greater touch points and the ability to perform online transactions 24-hours globally. We are aligned with Shopee’s vision in helping local entrepreneurs grow their business via our platform and would work hand-in-hand with them to roll out more services in the near future.”

In addition to the Shopee Free Shipping Program, Shopee provides access to free entrepreneurship programmes and workshops conducted by Shopee University to educate and empower entrepreneurs.

“Shopee University actively provides guidance on how to run an online business and insights into the latest mobile e-commerce trends for our sellers. Attendees are taught about Shopee, and are given exclusive updates on our latest features, products and promotions. Our main aim is to maximise the potential of our sellers and empower more online businesses to utilise mobile e-commerce platforms as a revenue-generating platform,” explained Ho.

The curriculum at Shopee University is developed based on the best practices of Shopee’s top sellers, featuring more topics such as online marketing methods for e-commerce, product photography and supply chain optimisation.

Interested?

The Shopee app can be downloaded for free on all mobile platforms via Apple’s App Store and Google Play Store.

Read the WorkSmart Asia blog posts about developments at Shopee Singapore and a lesson at Shopee University on how to take #instagramworthy shots

posted from Bloggeroid

Shopee goes all out to attract community members for its e-commerce platform

Feng charts Shopee's growth in Southeast Asia and Taiwan since its launch late last year. 

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.”

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 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:

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.

More social features

 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 

Assisting sellers

 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

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?

Register for Shopee Free Shipping

Hashtag: #shopeeSG

*'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. 

 

posted from Bloggeroid

Flickr Wall Art now available internationally

Yahoo has launched Flickr wall art in international markets, allowing companies to decorate their walls with the work of Flickr photographers around the world. 

In October, Yahoo announced the Flickr Wall Art service, which allows Flickr photographs from licensed artists who are part of the Flickr Marketplace to be turned into museum-quality wall prints that can be purchased on Flickr. 

The Flickr team has curated Flickr-licensed photographs in popular categories such as abstract, landscapes, travel, and animals that can be ordered in sizes from 8”x10” up to 20”x30” and shipped internationally.

Flickr's Premium Photo Mounts are printed with professional grade paper and mounted with 1” wood-textured edges. With the Gallery Canvas Wrap option, artist-grade canvas is stretched across a traditional 1.25” wood frame. 

 

Check out more information in the Tumblr post here and start browsing here. 

Read the blog post about a similar service from Getty Images here.

*These images from Flickr are the author's, but not in the Flickr Marketplace.

DHL launches Taiwan-to-Austria freight service for less than a container load

DHL Global Forwarding has launched a new weekly LCL (Less-than-Container-Load)* service from Taiwan to Austria. The new service, which arrives in Vienna via Koper, Slovenia, enables Taiwanese exporters to ship their cargo every Monday from Keelung or Kaohsiung, for arrival in Vienna 35 days after.

"It is imperative that as a company, DHL Global Forwarding has its finger on the pulse of the industry and can identify the needs of exporters. Specifically we must focus on helping to strengthen cross-border trade partnerships. With the Eastern Europe states expanding their appetite for Asian products, this new service supports the needs of Taiwanese traders to perform more efficient and speedy services to their customers there," said Kelvin Leung, CEO, Asia Pacific, DHL Global Forwarding.

Offered through Danmar Lines, DHL Global Forwarding's in-house carrier, the new service drastically shortens shipping time by 8 days, close to 25%, as it bypasses LCL trans-shipment hubs and reduces time spent on facility handling. The service is also over 3% more CO2-efficient than traditional routings.
"Taiwan exports are reaching farther and wider than ever before and Austria is an important trading partner of Taiwan and a key gateway to Central and Eastern Europe. According to the Bureau of Foreign Trade, plastic articles, electrical equipment and machinery account for nearly 50% of our overall exports," said Kenny Mok, Managing Director, Taiwan, DHL Global Forwarding. 

"We realise that Taiwan-based traders want to extend their product footprint and supply chains to the Eastern Europe markets of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. With our latest LCL service launch, we are fulfilling their demand for faster speed-to-market services to that region."
"Following well-established weekly LCL services from Taiwan to Germany, France, UK, Switzerland, Italy, Hungary, Poland, Sweden, Finland and Lithuania, this new service marks the most recent European route that DHL Global Forwarding has launched out of the Asia Pacific. DHL currently operates the world's largest in-house LCL network with more than 2,000,000 cubic metres of LCL freight handled annually and more than 2,500 weekly point pairs from 45 Asia Pacific terminals sailing to 56 destination terminals in Europe," added Marc Meier, Global Head, LCL, DHL Global Forwarding.

All LCL services are accompanied by DHL's IT solutions, including DHL Track & Trace, which allow full visibility throughout the whole supply chain. DHL also provides insurance services to customers as a value-added service. DHL's Shippers Interest Insurance (SII) covers loss or damage of all cargo transported by DHL, as well as transportation costs.

DHL carries more than 97% of its total volumes in-house. The in-house systems and strong global network enables the control of cargo and information flow, increasing speed, accuracy, cost efficiency and reliability. The DHL team manages traditional LCL as well as LCL/FCL** or 'buyer's consolidation', offering localised expertise ensuring timely, secure and cost-effective services at both ends of the supply chain.
*Less than Container Load (LCL) refers to smaller amounts of ocean freight cargo that are insufficient to fill a Full Container Load on their own. The service is widely used by customers across many industries as it offers greater flexibility in the management of supply chains by being able to ship smaller quantities on a timelier basis.
**Full container load (FCL)