Regional Highlights

Vital lessons from Malaysia’s most successful local ecommerce platforms

The final quarter of 2018 is beginning soon and along with it comes Malaysia’s most vital online sale periods. This includes the 11.11 ( also known as Singles Day), Black Friday, 12.12 Sale and other yearend sales. This is eCommerce’s most crucial period as revenue and online traffic is set to double during the sale festival.

What’s more interesting is that these online sale periods garnered more interest when compared to more traditional sale periods which has been around for decades such as the Chinese New Year sale or Hari Raya sale periods.

At this time, all eCommerce platforms experienced exponential growth in online traffic. Lazada recorded RM1 billion by end December 2017 in gross merchandise value (GMV) when they concluded their online sale event and this trend is expected to grow year on year.

This shows how fast consumers’ preferences can change in just a few years. As such, the key winners in the industry are the ones who are able to keep up with consumers’ behaviour and take it to the next level to become trendsetters.

So, what can we learn and adopt from trendsetters in ecommerce? The best role-models to look up to are the most successful locally based platforms in Malaysia. The Map of eCommerce currently ranks Lelong. my, Hermo and Fashion Valet as the three most visited platforms as of 2Q18.

Here’s what we can learn from them:

Relentlessly evolving to remain relevant

In the modern economy of eCommerce, staying relevant according to current trends is a very important. One such player who has braved through the tough times and remained relevant is Lelong.my.

To date, Lelong remains one of the key pioneers in eCommerce in Malaysia. Unlike other players, Lelong is the only eCommerce platform that was established prior to the turn of the millennium. They have been around since 1998 and recently celebrated their 20th anniversary.

Richard Tan, co- founder of Lelong stated that he believes in starting out small and building on a niche before expanding. During the 90s, there was no lack of hype surrounding online shopping and Amazon’s huge success in the US. However, consumers were still very new to online shopping and unsure if merchants can be trusted.

This issue was similar from a business’ point of view as well where retailers have only relied on traditional brick and mortar shops to sell their products or services. Lelong identified this challenge and decided to take on various initiatives to build trust between sellers and buyers.

After several years as an auction site, Lelong evolved to become a B2C (business to consumer) marketplace and has remained relevant to shoppers in today’s uber-competitive internet industry. This was evident in the study on the History of eCommerce Malaysia where Lelong has consistently remained among the top five most search ecommerce platforms in the past 10 years.

However, their journey was never smooth sailing. Richard was never disheartened even if it took seven years before Lelong became profitable in 2005 as they saw consistent growth year over year. Today, the ecommerce platform has remained profitable as a private company and on a monthly basis garners more than five million visitors in Malaysia.

Replicating foreign success in Malaysia

While various ecommerce platforms were able to come up with original products and solutions for the market, sometimes it might be best to replicate and localise successes seen abroad. This was the inspiration behind Fashion Valet (FV).

In an interview the co-founder, Vivy Yusof stated her inspiration for a fashion eCommerce platform came while she was exposed to consumerism in the UK. With a just a few clicks on the mouse, consumers can easily have products delivered to their doorstep. She experienced further validation for an online fashion platform when she experienced frustrations being stuck in traffic jams, crowded parking lots at retail areas and the lack of options in the online space.

Together with her then boyfriend Fadzarudin Shah Anuar ( now her husband) FV was launched in 2010 with a minimal budget of RM100,000 from their personal savings and loans. In the following years, FV garnered a huge following and has successfully obtained funds securing approximately RM311 million in equity funding to date. Today, they are listed as amongst the most well- funded startups in Southeast Asia by CB Insights, receives about 438,000 visitors on a monthly basis and has four flagship physical stores across Malaysia.

Though FV was born out of a Western ecommerce model, Vivy was able to localise her business by giving a personalised touch in the way she connects to consumers. This was mainly done through social media channels where Vivy was able to directly connect with users.

Her ability in connecting with Malaysians has been apparent years before she initiated FV. Under the domain proudduck.com, Vivy regularly blogged on topics such as love, life, motherhood and family. Through the years, she garnered a huge following of more than 1.5 millions followers on her Instagram account, 86,000 YouTube subscribers and more than 40,000 visitors on her personal blog page.

You don’t need to be an expert to be successful

Unknown to many consumers, the founders of Hermo have little idea about beauty and cosmetic products prior its founding. Similar to FV, the founding of Hermo was inspired by a popular online beauty site in China named Jumei.com. Co-founders PS Chong and Ian Chua entered the scene as sneaker sellers on LowYat.net and discovered a lack of beauty products available online.

In 2010, Hermo was founded and today, garners about 758,000 visitors on a monthly basis. When asked in an interview what was the secret to their achievement, they plainly stated Hermo was successful because they try really hard to understand consumers’ needs and work really hard to meet their needs.

Hermo received further validation as their ex-investors Gobi Partners recently received the ‘Exit of the Year’ awards from the Malaysia Venture Capital Association for receiving an IRR (internal rate of return) of 91 percent during its exit. In May 2017, Hermo was acquired by listed Japanese company iStyle.

The successes of the three ecommerce platforms mentioned above remains the tip of the iceberg as the ecommerce industry in Malaysia is expected to grow exponentially. This is evident as we see a big influx of new local and international players entering Malaysia and Southeast Asia in recent years. Expect to hear more success stories in the years to come.

Jeremy Chew is the senior content marketer for iPrice group, the fastest growing product meta-search platform in Southeast Asia. For further information, please visit https://iprice.my.