How Southeast Asia’s ecommerce companies should brace for Singles Day

Rush hour at the mall. Photo credit: estherpoon / 123RF Stock Photo.

Mobilized and motivated by Alibaba, China’s Singles Day (11.11) shopping frenzy is spreading to Southeast Asia this year. In 2015, the 11.11th drove US$14.30 billion in online sales in China. In comparison, Black Friday and Cyber Monday combined, sold a mere US$5.80 billion in the United States.

The growing influence of the Chinese shopping holiday stems from a Pac-Man-like acquisition pattern. After surprising shifts in the market this year, it’s clear that Alibaba wants its shopping cart parked in Southeast Asia. The retail giant invested in Lazada, a company based in the region, earlier this year. Just a few months later, the popular Singaporean ecommerce company acquired local grocery platform, RedMart.

Alibaba’s competitors also have their sights set on the region with JD.com’s launch in Indonesia last year, and US retail giant, Amazon is primed to launch in Singapore in 2017.

With these red flags in place, ecommerce companies in Southeast Asia should amp up their businesses to prepare for even more shopping holidays to come. Whether you are a merchant, reseller, or marketplace, here are some tips that can help maximize returns on the loneliest day of the year.

Partner up

Stick to what you’re good at. There is no way one platform or merchant can do everything. Take Lazada for example. During key sales periods last year, the company saw its revenue uplift by six times on November 11 and December 12. Not to mention, there was a 55 percent spike in orders on Black Friday.

Due to the growing consumer base, the company has changed approaches over the years. Instead of trying to do everything in-house, the platform has moved to a partnership model. This model allows them to work with specialists who can help with everything from creating content, recommending photographers, to the fulfillment of logistics.

Spend on partnerships that exist to do all the heavy lifting for you.

Automate onboarding

Merchants, if you manually upload stocks to marketplaces, you’ll only be listing 50 out of 1,000 products. Likewise, for marketplaces, there are so many other things to worry about and prepare for that there isn’t enough time to manually onboard sellers. Mountains of product data will come in and marketplaces need to restructure it to optimize for search.

Onboarding should be outsourced and completely automated. Only quality control (QC) should be manually operated. This way, you’ll be able to get new merchants onboard in a matter of hours, not days.

Sync stock to avoid sell-out

The worst case scenario for any ecommerce platform isn’t a lack of customers, it’s a lack of stock when demand is high. Calling up a customer to offer vouchers or refunds is expensive and time-consuming.

APAC gift-focused ecommerce platform Gifts Less Ordinary got a wake-up call on the need for stock syncing when one of their items was worn by Prince George during Obama’s visit with the Royal family. At the time, the retailer, My 1st Years, was selling exclusively with them. As a result, orders poured in faster than the platform’s founder, Amy Read, expected.

The worst case scenario for any ecommerce platform isn’t a lack of customers, it’s a lack of stock when demand is high.

“We were getting orders every five minutes,” she says. “The product, however, is configurable and customizable, so we can’t mass produce these items.”

Expect an increase in mobile sales

Beef up the logistics team