Month: September 2020

Sept. 15, 2020

Growing the digital ecosystem: How Lazada’s partnership with hundreds of enablers across Southeast Asia makes it easy for sellers to do business anywhere

As digitalisation accelerates in Southeast Asia, eCommerce has become a growth lever for brands and retailers. But selling online often requires different skill sets. Moreover, building an in-house team with full capabilities can take time, a luxury many small businesses and sellers may not be able to afford, especially if they are doing it for the first time.

In recent years, a new category of service providers in the ecosystem has emerged to address this pain point for businesses. These eCommerce enablers provide end-to-end and even customised eCommerce services to brands and businesses selling online. They can offer everything from front-end store management, product listing and order processing to customer service, logistics and marketing.

These enablement companies work with brands and eCommerce platforms in a tripartite partnership. Platforms such as Lazada, with its suite of technology tools, provide the infrastructure. Brands provide the strategy, vision and guidelines while the enablers turn vision into reality, as they manage the day-to-day operations on the platform infrastructure.

“At Lazada we work with hundreds of enablers across Southeast Asia to make it easy for our merchants to do business anywhere,” said Fern Nannaphat, a senior vice president in Lazada’s commercial team.

“Increasingly, we have seen eCommerce sellers, offline distributors, business process outsourcing companies, logistics providers, independent software vendors and marketing agencies pivoting and expanding their service scope to become Lazada Partners. They are essentially eCommerce enablers or e-enablers for short. They power thousands of brands on our platform, from MNCs to SMEs,” Nannaphat said.  

One of the key services that e-enablers provide is helping brands and sellers navigate the sophisticated suite of tools that the platform provides, which can help businesses directly engage with their customers. These tools include features that drive traffic, show offers, run and promote in-store campaigns and engage with customers via instant messaging chats.

As brands surge online, even the rapid proliferation of enablement companies cannot keep up with the demand for their services. Lazada has launched the Lazada Partner Evaluation Programme to meet this demand and help build an ecosystem of e-enablers that will deliver top-notch services. This programme incentivises the e-enablers by showcasing them to the brands. It assesses the e-enablers by these criteria: service, assortment, sales, traffic and feedback. For example, it rewards the ones who can drive high GMV growth or have the ability to fill assortment gaps with new arrivals.

In China today, there are many thousands of such e-enablers serving brands on platforms like Tmall. The e-enablers provide more advanced services as the platforms evolved to embrace new retail, omni-channel integration, social commerce and more. The eCommerce landscape of Southeast Asia is still young. But similar trends and directions are shaping the ecosystem, especially as the pandemic nudges consumers to change the way they shop.

“We strongly believe that this is still a clear blue sky for opportunities. We will see this tripartite relationship between platforms, brands and e-enablers grow to serve more customers in eCommerce, and in more creative ways,” Nannaphat said.

Sept. 15, 2020

Lazada on Ground: Thailand’s first-of-its-kind pop-up store that integrates online shopping with the offline experience at Siam Center

Siam Center is a landmark in the regional shopping paradise that is Thailand. Built in the 1970s right in the heart of Bangkok, it was one of the city’s first malls. Renovations have kept it up to date in its evolution as a popular shopping destination known for its fashion brands catering to the young and trendy, from international names to boutiques housing the collections of local designers.  

Recently, Siam Center underwent a “renovation” of another kind, one with a 21st-Century flavour. It became one of the first malls in Southeast Asia to go online, when about 40 of its tenants set up virtual storefronts on Lazada under the mall’s banner, effectively creating a mini online replica. As an extension of its partnership with Lazada, the mall provided about 130 sq m of space on the ground floor to launch Lazada on Ground, a pop-up store that is a first for Thailand, because it married the offline and online experience for shoppers.

“Our new Lazada On Ground concept is a physical showcase of more than 40 of our top brands on LazMall, our premium B2C virtual mall and the largest online one in Southeast Asia,” said Jack Zhang, chief executive officer of Lazada Thailand.

This concept enables consumers to order online and pick up offline, and if they want to, try a product offline and make recurring purchases online if they are satisfied with it. If shoppers prefer, they can also buy from the pop-up store (in some case, just by scanning a QR code) and have the option of having it delivered to their homes, so that they can keep on shopping without having to cart their purchases around.

“The integration of offline and online offers consumers the best of both worlds while it opens up new and innovative ways for brands to engage with their customers,” Zhang said. “An online presence can help drive traffic to offline stores, where brands can acquire new customers, while strengthening connections with existing ones. At the same time, this can  improve stock efficiency.”

Samsung, JBL, Huxley, Birkenstock and LEGO are among the many top LazMall brands participating in this novel retail concept in Thailand.  The pop-up store will operate at Siam Center until January, and will incorporate the Shoppertainment experience, with daily livestreaming sessions created by influencers, celebrities and leading brands such as realme, Boots, JUNG SAEM MOOL and ALAND.

Chanisa Kaewruen, Siam Piwat’s senior deputy managing director for marketing promotion and business relations, said: “We are glad to be partnering with the country’s leading eCommerce platform on this innovative approach. Measures taken during the pandemic to reduce crowds in public places have affected foot traffic to the mall. So I am glad that many of our brands can go online to diversify their income streams and we can have a physical Lazada store to bring new customers to their offline stores. Most importantly, our partnership makes shopping seamless for everyone.”

Thai Designer Club: Launch of LazMall’s dedicated fashion channel to help top Thai designer brands capture online opportunities  

Lazada Thailand launched its Thai Designer Club, a fashion zone on LazMall that is home to more than 50 premium local brands, as they bid to capture online opportunities. For the launch event, Lazada teamed up with designer names such as Asava, Victeerut, TandT, Painkiller, Janesuda, S’uvimol, Disaya and Issue to showcase their newest collections on a runway show. It all started in March with just six Thai designers, when Lazada partnered with Bangkok Fashion Society in an initiative titled “Premium at your Fingertips.” Since then, the Thai Designer Club has grown to house 50 of the top Thai designer names,  enabling them to extend their reach beyond Thailand’s major cities. That has boosted sales for the brands, such as Janesuda’s exclusive collection, whose sales increased by more than 200 times since the designer joined LazMall.

“This collaboration is a milestone for the premium fashion industry in Thailand. Lazada is the first eCommerce platform authorised to distribute premium products for Thai Designers,” said Thanida Suiwatana, chief business officer of Lazada Thailand. “With the phenomenal growth of the platform in such a short period of time, we believe that the Designer Club channel will help to drive the Thai fashion industry, and help sustain our local brands.”

Polpat Asavaprapha, founder of the Asava Group and president of Bangkok Fashion Society, described Lazada’s Thai Designer Club as a good opportunity to extend the brand’s target group. “This online platform has become the new main distribution channel for brands. Lazada’s Thai Designer Club leverages its strong relationships with celebrities and influencers to raise the brands’ profiles.”  

Sept. 15, 2020

A glimpse at how LazMall empowers and supports brands and sellers, from customised onboarding training to customer support

In the past year, brands and retailers have increasingly migrated online. With the pandemic shifting consumers’ buying habits online, LazMall, Southeast Asia’s largest virtual mall for authentic brands, saw a tripling of the number of brands on the platform. It recently celebrated its two-year anniversary with a fresh look and new features that aims to make shopping more seamless, intuitive and enjoyable.

Since its launch in September 2018, LazMall has grown nine-fold to house more than 18,000 international and local brands across the region. In the quarter ended in June, orders on LazMall more than tripled year-over-year.

With so many brands flocking to LazMall, we want to share a behind-the-scenes look at how new brands and sellers are welcomed on board and set up for success through dedicated customer service support. 

Customised onboarding training: L’Oréal as case study

In June, L’Oréal partnered with Lazada on a successful “Bring Beauty Back” campaign, a three-day marathon event that included livestreaming, games and augmented reality.

To onboard L’Oréal, the Lazada team developed a customised training programme that stretched over several months, with an average of 50 people from L’Oréal’s commercial and operations teams attending each online session.

The module, tailored to L’Oréal’s objectives, teaches everything from the technique of optimising e-shop settings to improving onsite traffic to deciphering buying patterns, spotting trends and catering to customers’ preferences – all in the quest to drive more effective sales conversions. L’Oréal’s team learned how to use the platform’s suite of technology tools, as well as its product management, logistics and payments systems. The brand representatives also had access to additional learning modules on Lazada University’s site, which are localized to each country.

Said Thibault de Saint Victor, L’Oréal’s general manager for eCommerce in Asean: “The beauty of Lazada’s onboarding process and training is that they really equip brands with the tools to effectively engage directly with our customers. They want to be a platform empowering brands to do business. You have access to their tools, technology and training, and you can use the platform that will best help you connect with your customers, such as through livestreams or the instant messaging chat function.”

“We make it as simple as possible for our brands to sign up,” said Jon Chin, regional head of seller growth and engagement at Lazada. “To do that, we apply technology to increase the efficiency of the processes, for example, the use of image recognition software to verify documents that brands and sellers need to submit for authenticity and autofill the fields based on text recognition software. We are also constantly looking at how we can leverage the Alibaba ecosystem to provide novel and unique benefits to new sellers.”

Customer service: LazMall’s Dedicated Partner Support Centre

Lazada provides a dedicated point of contact to support select LazMall sellers on any enquiries concerning the platform: whether it’s a question on how the platform works, or problems related to an order. LazMall sellers will always be served by the same agent. This allows the company to create a stronger partnership as the agent will always be the same to help and support the seller.

From the commercial side, LazMall sellers will be assigned a key account manager to help them plan campaigns and provide them advice on category assortment, for example, on what sells well at what price and keywords to input to generate more visibility.

“This dedicated support differentiates us from our competitors, as it creates a strong connection between LazMall and our brand partners,” said the customer care team’s chief of staff, Sebastien Destenbert. “This allows us to always provide the same point of contact that will know the seller specificities and be able to better support our brands and sellers. Our Dedicated Partner Support Centre is recognised as a superior experience as we do have a better service level and seller satisfaction. We help to resolve queries on a range of topics, such as claims, logistics and order fulfilment.”