Ship Shape

Gary Tanoesoedibjo, Co-chief Marketing Officer of Storesend Indonesia, talks to Edith Emeralda about the role the company is playing in today’s e-commerce ecosystem

In 2017, indonesia’s population totalled around 262 million souls with more than half— around 143 million—as active Internet users according to the Association of Indonesian Internet Service Providers. Among Asian countries, excluding Taiwan, Indonesia’s growth in e-commerce spending is ranked among the top, as revealed by the 2016 Google and Temasek Holdings report.

“After I came back from abroad, I realised that people are converting to online because there are fewer overhead costs and more traffic, and subsidies are a given,” says the Co- Chief Marketing Officer of Storesend elogistic Indonesia (SSI) Gary Tanoesoedibjo. “Shopee, for example, gives official shops access to 2.5 million unique visitors daily.” Seeing an opportunity to cater to the growing e-commerce field, Gary did some research and learned about e-fulfilment services, which fulfil orders for brands that are directly serving clients in small quantities—and, thus, SSI was born.

He then joined in a venture with Joe Khoo and Tommy Yong, the two founders who first opened the istore isend fulfilment centre in Malaysia back in 2009, to open SSI together with Dos Ni Roha (DNR) Distribution. As the third expansion following Singapore in the last quarter of 2016, SSI worked under DNR from late 2017 before having the license issued at the beginning of 2018.

E-commerce players are able to also use the three Malaysian and one Singaporean fulfilment centres besides the four located in Jakarta, Medan, Makassar, and Surabaya. “Moreover, DNR has 55 years of success in distributing medical equipment, pharmaceuticals, and consumer products,” says Gary. “In total there are 39 warehouses, 17 sub-distributor branches, and 45 affiliated warehouses all around Indonesia under DNR.”

All of these spaces are ready to take on the surge of e-commerce players that comes with the growth of buyers. “The 2016 Google report also stated that Indonesia’s e-commerce industry is growing at 39 per cent yearly, which means that by today SSI should be delivering 750,000 packages daily on all platforms—however, we’re closer to 1.5 million already,” Gary says. He adds that telecommunication providers will start closing down the 2G network by the end of the year, which means that there is an estimated 40 million 2G network users who will have to migrate to 3G in the near future—and the shifting trend is seen already in the industry.

SSI implements a warehouse online delivery and inventory system to manage all these comings and goings on multiple channels— from order history to inventory management, return processes, and so much more—and all available in real time. However, Gary remarks that SSI is not solely a logistic service. “It’s closer to being called an enabler with two components: logistical support and marketing

support—including managing our clients’ online stores and operational activities,” Gary says. Further into the topic, he explains that the e-commerce ecosystem is still growing and is not yet mature, which is why big brands are still focusing on offline areas and online is thought to be an expensive investment cost.

“They look to us to manage everything from product marketing to shipping and all that lies in between,” says Gary. “And then there are the online sellers who started out on Instagram before migrating to an e-commerce platform after earning a large number of followers.” Because these resellers’ focus is e-commerce, he explains, their sales usually lie between five- and 10-fold more than official brands—thus, they usually do not want the full service and only want to use SSI’S logistical service.

Managing all these potentials through SSI is a whole new learning opportunity for Gary, who initially studied business administration and management. “SSI does not have a CEO, but we have three chiefs: a marketing officer, an operations officer, and a finance officer,” Gary says. “We are still part of the Malaysian holding group, and every chief has his or her own strengths and weaknesses—so all the other chiefs are my role models.”

With a more relaxed structure and a more horizontally aligned hierarchy compared with a traditional company model, Gary strives to be a collaborative leader. One of the more ambitious goals he has is to enable a same-day shipping promise once SSI can activate most of its warehouses. “If we can tackle this service in an archipelago of around 17,000 islands, that will be a good achievement,” he says.

“I realised that people are converting to online because there are fewer overhead costs and more traffic, and subsidies are a given.”