Blibli Commemorates its 2nd Anniversary with New Look and More Plans

Blibli celebrated its second anniversary yesterday, and as part of that the company gave us some insight into its achievements so far and things it is going to offer to the customers in the near future.

Since September 2012, Blibli has had customers from across Indonesia, with more than 90,000 registered members, more than 600 merchants and 35,000 quality products in eight different categories. Future customers can choose whether they want to sign in as a member but Blibli has a smart strategy to make its customers loyal: every registered member gets a free shopping voucher. Now, Blibli has 40 percent loyal customers.

Sadly, Blibli’s CEO, Kusumo Martanto, would not give us the company’s yearly revenue. Kusumo also added that Blibli keeps on re-investing its money, so he couldn’t give any detail about its break-even point. He only mentioned that every month it has grown significantly and the sales have grown to 1,600 percent in a year. Furthermore, unique visitors have risen 1,000 percent and pageviews are up 900 percent. Sales from mobile transactions have gone up 25 percent in less than one year. Blibli has also launched a tablet version (not an app) that can be accessed through a browser.

Kusumo doesn’t agree that Blibli is an e-commerce marketplace; he wants BliBli to be known as an online retailer or shopping mall because it offers lifestyle products. On other online marketplaces, anyone can sell anything, but on Blibli, the team selects merchants carefully to make sure that they have a legit business and quality products.

Also to commemorate its second anniversary, Blibli has fully revamped its website with a sophisticated new look and design, price and brand filters, multiple product images (with bigger images), multiple product views (multiple angles), advanced search, and information about product availability. These changes are in sync with Blibli’s recent plan to give shopping convenience to customers and to educate offline customers to shop online. There are now 12 methods of payment to be used for transactions, in association with BCA, Mandiri, CIMB Niaga, BRI and XL as the only telco company.

I asked Kusumo who Blibli’s competitors are, and he answered with none since Blibli is a B2C with the most complete items. But Lazada and Zalora both seem like services that could challenge Blibli’s ambitions here. I also mentioned the soon-arrival of Ebay to Indonesia as I was curious about how will Blibli prepare to defend its turf. Kusumo responded that competition always exists and that’s a good thing for the Indonesian market. If foreign marketplaces as big as Ebay want to open branches in Indonesia, it means that Indonesia’s online market is trustworthy, which will drive more people to go online.

Blibli plans to continue to develop its mobile apps and add more lifestyle products, such as gadgets, fashions, and kids’ products.

(Editing by Charlie Custer)