Author: C. Phua

By Thu Pham
Oct. 14, 2021

Nguyen Tan Xuan hadn’t planned on becoming an entrepreneur. As a small-town boy from Ben Tre, a province in the Mekong Delta area of southern Vietnam, he thought he found his dream job when he started working as a telecommunication engineer for a large Canadian firm in Ho Chi Minh City.

The job, however, turned out to be all-consuming, with many long days, late-night meetings and tight deadlines. The work was so demanding that it was impossible to even take any days off.

“I felt trapped,” Nguyen said.

Realising that corporate life was not for him, Nguyen started experimenting with starting his own business. It wasn’t easy at first; he tried selling watches and accessories through his personal Facebook page and later tried designing and selling anti-theft products for motorbikes, but both endeavours were short-lived and left Nguyen in debt.

These failed attempts, however, did not deter Nguyen, who saw eCommerce as a way to a better life. Having kept his day job, he was able to pay off his debts and try again, this time by selling healthcare equipment. This third endeavour finally brought Nguyen some success, and towards the end of 2018, he decided to join Lazada so he could further scale his business and grow his customer base.

“Lazada had started opening a channel for individual sellers. I signed up right away and became one of the first individual sellers on the platform,” Nguyen recalled.  

At first, he had to juggle his day job with managing his business on Lazada. After finishing work at the office, he would return home in the evenings to pack parcels and respond to customers’ questions. At that time, he only had about 10 orders a day. Wanting to improve his eCommerce know-how, he enrolled in some sales courses, where he learned about customer psychology and advertising techniques.

After six months of launching on Lazada, Nguyen became one of the platform’s top sellers. This gave him the confidence to expand into the household appliances category as well – a decision that has proven extremely beneficial to his business’ growth. Nguyen’s strong performance on Lazada has also enabled him to access a wider consumer base. Thanks to the success he’s found on the eCommerce platform, Nguyen was eventually able to quit his corporate job to fully focus on his business.

As a seller, Nguyen says that Lazada’s support and resources have been instrumental to his business success. For example, he often uses platform tools such as Seller Pick and Sponsored Display to boost his products’ visibility. Meanwhile, with the Flexi-Combo tool, he can offer free gifts to consumers, which in turn leads to more positive ratings for his store.

The young entrepreneur has also found tremendous success by participating in Lazada’s mega campaigns, which bring buzz, high traffic and a wide variety of seller tools. During the recent 9.9 shopping festival, for example, he received nearly 8,000 orders in just three days and managed to make triple of his regular revenue.

Even during the pandemic, Nguyen was able to use his online business to maintain his livelihood and continue reaching and selling to customers nationwide.

“This is very hard time for everyone but I can still achieve these huge orders with a lot of support from the Lazada operations team and Lazada Logistics,” he said.

Wanting to share the benefits of eCommerce, Nguyen became a mentor with Lazada’s LazMaster programme, which aims to connect successful sellers with new joiners as mentors and mentees, respectively.

“I want to make Lazada a helpful place for every seller, so they can easily start their dreams, their ambitions and develop themselves,” Nguyen said. So far, he has conducted two big learning sessions with 800 mentees and more than 10 small learning courses with nearly 300 participants. He is also a district leader of Binh Thanh, which has more than 600 seller members.

Now, at the age of 28, Nguyen is confident that he’s found his true calling as an eCommerce entrepreneur and has encouraged other young people to step out of their comfort zones to pursue their dreams.

“If you are passionate about business, then boldly pursue it. If I can do it, so can you,” he said. “Failures are always valuable lessons for us”.

Thu Pham is an associate in Lazada Vietnam’s public relations team.

Sept. 16, 2021
By LazBeat staff

The Southeast Asian eCommerce market is evolving at breakneck speed, and innovation, cutting-edge technology and premium customer experiences are essential in helping brands tap into this growth, speakers at the second edition of Lazada’s LazMall Brands Future Forum said.

The hybrid event, held on Sept. 1, welcomed in-person guests at the Marina Bay Sands Expo & Convention Centre in Singapore as well as virtual attendees who tuned into the livestream from all around the world. More than 3,400 guests in total attended the event. 

It was the first BFF to be held since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, and Lazada Group Chief Executive Officer Chun Li discussed the pandemic’s impact on what was already a fast-changing digital commerce landscape in Southeast Asia.

“The past year has not been an easy one for any of us. And I am sure we all experienced many firsts and also learned many lessons in both our personal and work lives. We have seen resilience and at the same time experienced innovation,” Li remarked during his welcome speech. “As we look to the future, I am very optimistic that all of the countries across Southeast Asia will be able to flatten the curve and emerge stronger than ever.”

Indeed, last year saw 40 million new internet users go online in Southeast Asia, meaning that 70% of the region’s population now have access to the digital economy. At Lazada, there are now more than 150 million monthly average users, and online transactions on the platform grew 100% year over year in December 2020. Last month, the eCommerce giant also released its first Digital Commerce Confidence Index, which showed that online sellers across Southeast Asia remained optimistic about growth prospects even during the pandemic.

This eCommerce boom has been reflected most pertinently through the rapid rise of LazMall, Lazada’s dedicated destination for authentic brands. The platform, which celebrated its third anniversary during this year’s BFF, is home to more than 32,000 local and international brands and has seen a doubling of new shoppers in the first half of 2021 compared to the year before.

The launch last month of LazMall Prestige for premium brands is further testament to the changing attitudes towards online retail; when Lazada was founded in 2012, shoppers and sellers alike were unsure about online commerce and used it mostly for low-priced items, said James Chang, who heads the company’s strategic accounts and retail. Nowadays, not only are consumers increasingly embracing eCommerce, they are more confident about purchasing bigger-ticket items across more categories online.

For brands, this means greater opportunities but also a more pressing need to go beyond utility and price-driven factors to create memorable purchase journeys for consumers. At Lazada, this is done by creating one holistic and synchronised experience across a brand’s go-to-market channels so that it has the resources, flexibility and agility to respond to customers’ evolving needs while also being able to effectively communicate its brand story.

Raymond Yang, Lazada’s chief product officer and head of platform operations, also took to the stage at BFF to explain how the company constantly develops and rolls out new solutions to empower brands to win big online. The platform’s partners have access to an extensive toolkit, which includes customisable storefront features, promotional and marketing solutions, livestreaming, loyalty programmes and special campaigns – all of which allow for better engagement, stronger customer trust and, as a result, greater success for brands, he said. Lazada also recently launched a new customer-insights data solution and is currently in the midst of upgrading its customer engagement management function to further boost brand partners’ performance.

“Leveraging Lazada’s capabilities in tech, data and logistics, and with our partners’ strengths in product assortment, marketing and customer engagement, our goal is to continue to win customers’ loyalty across Southeast Asia. We are fully committed to help our brands achieve long-term success within Lazada’s ecosystem,” Yang said.

This year’s event also featured the second BFF Awards Ceremony to celebrate the top-performing and most innovative global and Southeast Asian brands on LazMall. Recognising the incredible evolution of the eCommerce industry, especially amid the pandemic, the ceremony featured nine industry awards – four more than the previous edition – with honourees including the Estée Lauder Companies, Samsung, Nike, Coach, Lancôme for Lancôme Advanced Génifique Youth Activating Concentrate, Shiseido Group, Starbucks, Synagie and the L’Oréal Consumer Products Division.

As part of BFF, Lazada partnered with Handprint, a software company that helps companies with sustainability solutions. Through the joint initiative, approximately 14,000 trees will be planted at East Java Green Shield – West Bank 9 and Central Grove 6 at Situbondo, Indonesia. This will absorb 3,360 tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to 13,440 return flights between Singapore and Jakarta.

BFF also set the stage for Lazada’s first year-end mega sales campaign, 9.9. This year’s campaign reflected a growing support for homegrown brands as well as consumer demand for enhancing wellbeing through engaging experiences, skincare and work-from-home essentials. About 125,000 logistics frontliners came together to ensure that customers received their parcels swiftly and safely. The fastest delivery only took 13 minutes in Indonesia.

In some markets, like Thailand, 9.9 was also a time of “mega-giving”. Under the LazadaCARES initiative, Thai shoppers redeemed enough coins on the app to donate 99,999 care packages to communities and people affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Lazada Thailand partnered with nine brands to provide essential items in the care packages, which were then distributed by Lazada Logistics to nine charitable foundations to help the needy.

Featured image above: Lazada Group CEO Chun Li at the LazMall Brands Future Forum 2021.

By Anoushka Bhar
Sept 16, 2021

Malaysia is known for a rich cultural legacy that encompasses everything from architectural elegance to traditional arts and crafts. But as a result of the pandemic, Malaysia’s culture and arts industry has experienced a significant loss amounting to RM85 million over the past year. 

Due to this, many micro, small and medium enterprises in the arts and culture sector had to pivot their strategies to focus more on online efforts to stay connected to their customers. One such local MSME is Penang-based Batek-Lah Collection, an authentic traditional Malaysian batik brand that started its eCommerce journey on Lazada.

“From what I saw, traditional culture and arts were slowly dying out as younger generations were adapting to a more globalised and modern world,” said James Lim, the owner of Batek-Lah Collection. “Even prior to the pandemic, the interest in traditional and cultural arts like batik had been fading among Malaysians as they seemed more interested in buying and wearing branded goods. Today, not many people own even a single piece of batik clothing because it is perceived as old-fashioned and untrendy.”

To make batik trendy again, Lim took over his family’s business in 2012. Lim Trading had started out in 1980 as a wholesale batik supplier. Formerly a mechanical engineer, Lim, who was 27 at the time, had little knowledge of the centuries-old craft of batik and had to learn the ropes on his own, eventually revamping the wholesale business to become Batek-Lah Collection.

Batek-Lah Collection specialises in small-batch, handmade products produced by Malaysian artists and artisans. Lim’s products had been especially popular with foreign tourists visiting Penang, who appreciated traditional handmade crafts and helped spread the word about his store by posting online reviews on tourist sites. Unfortunately, when the pandemic hit and travel bans were imposed, sales dropped to almost zero.

Instead of viewing this as a setback, however, Lim took this opportunity to ramp up his digital strategy and also shifted his focus to getting local Malaysian consumers to appreciate the craftsmanship of batik. To reach young and digitally-savvy Malaysian consumers, Lim began actively focusing on the Lazada store he set up a few years ago. He began participating in seller campaigns and even experimented with digital tools on the platform, such as Seller Picks, a free feature that allows eligible sellers to boost their potential best-selling products on search pages. He also tapped into Lazada’s free shipping mechanism and Sponsored Discovery tool, which enables shoppers to discover products via Lazada’s search results or browsing similar products.

Meanwhile, to change the common perception among young Malaysians of batik being old-fashioned, Lim launched a new line that reflects the latest trends. The line features batik designs on sleek and stylish items, such as face masks, men’s short-sleeved shirts, women’s tank tops and zipped dresses. All these efforts have helped increase Batek-Lah’s visibility on Lazada, leading to a 30% growth in the store’s customer reach. 

“The ongoing pandemic and lockdown have certainly impacted the livelihoods of those in the culture and arts industry, including business owners and craftspeople. We hope to be able to provide more businesses, especially MSMEs in this sector, with a platform to showcase their art, help them build their online presence, reach new audiences, build their network and become more exposed,” said Darren Rajaratnam, the chief operating officer of Lazada Malaysia.

Featured image above: James Lim, the founder and owner of Batek-Lah Collection.

Anoushka Bhar is a senior manager in Lazada’s PR team in Malaysia.