The key is in mastering the basics

For most businesses, e-commerce is (and has been for some time now) an indispensable topic for C-level executives, strategists, analysts, agencies and more when it comes to crafting growth plans.

Beyond all the incredible, exponential figures about e-commerce’s size, growth and potential, I would like to share some perspectives that could bridge the gap between vision and success.

Note: By definition, “Brands” refers to (mostly) companies with B2C brands that have an e-commerce business, primarily through e-commerce platforms with an “Official Store”. These Brands can be selling products from any of these categories: FMCG, Consumer Electronics, Fashion, to name a few.

Currently, I lead a team “at the tip of the spear” where we work closely with Brands to convert the shoppers at the end of their customer journey into delivering the sales (GMV).

The rigorous interaction and engagement with Brands have taught us that multiple key factors often cause significant gaps between vision (e.g. “We want to grow ten times bigger”) and success (e.g. “How come we only grew twice?”).

These can be narrowed down to three most frequently observed factors:

1) Lack of effective organizational set-up optimized for E-Commerce

For all the amazing things about Digital Commerce, the realization of success (e.g. convert more shoppers to buy, and shoppers to buy more) still depends largely on People & Teams.

Any partnership between Brands and e-commerce platforms cannot succeed by solely depending on the biggest exposure, best tools (e.g. search, store decoration, flash sales, etc) and best deals (e.g. free delivery, heavy discounts, vouchers, etc).

It still boils down to the People & Teams (both on Brands’ and E-Commerce Platform’s side) who will work together to strategize, plan, execute and ideally, perform real-time optimizations.

However, at most Southeast Asian Brands (particularly in Indonesia), a lack of organisational set-up that’s designed optimally for e-commerce is a major impediment to true exponential growth.

The first challenge: some Brands lack an e-commerce team.

If the same Brand Key Account Manager (KAM) has to prioritise between three to five offline channels (around 90 per cent of national annual sales) and three to five e-commerce platforms (one to 10 per cent of national annual sales), it’s clear where the attention, effort and resources will go to.

The same goes for the Operation’s role (to manage online stores & product page front-end operations), Graphics role (to develop visuals for mobile-App-optimized presentation to online shopper) and even Supply Chain roles (to manage On-Time-In-Full (OTIF) stock fulfillment for high availability, either through the Brand’s own warehouses or a third Party like Distributor or “Enabler”).

It is crucial that Brands have a “Head of e-commerce” and a KAM specially dedicated for e-commerce.

The best brands can even take it further by having dedicated KAM per E-commerce platform to increase agility/speed and minimize conflict of interest.

The second challenge: some Brands are either not truly committed to or lacking support from the organization, due to poor cross-functional support.

The most typical structural setup is the reporting line between the Head of e-commerce and the Sales Director.

While this may make sense on the surface, the reality is the Sales Director would inevitably be incentivized to prioritise “bigger” offline channels again, decreasing the necessary investment of effort and resources into future-proofing the business through e-commerce.

Also, to win in e-commerce, Brands need to have the attention, expertise and insights from multiple functions — excellence in sales tactics, marketing and supplying.

The best practices we see from exponential-growth Brands to combat these two problems include: having the Head of e-commerce report directly to the CEO in the market or to an N-1, equipping the Head of e-commerce with its autonomous e-commerce budget independent from offline channels, and even designing the budget to be “complete”.

This will increase the speed of decision-making, problem-solving and brainstorming so that Brands grow in a more dynamic, real-time manner.

2) Eagerness to “shortcut” to the “cool, sexy” stage before mastering fundamentals

All e-commerce practitioners know the following basic theory: To sell successfully, one requires a lot of eyeball-traffic which can be exchanged for product page views that can be converted into GMV/Sales through things like compelling content, product availability, competitive prices, other value-enhancing mechanics and multiple payment options. All while being underpinned by a seamless end-to-end experience (no bugs, no crashes, minimal latency, etc).

The real challenge is not being unaware of the theory, but knowing how to execute each of these building blocks with quality output, speed and consistency.

Also Read: 15 more awesome startups that will be apart of TOP100 APAC 2019

From my experience, Brands often start most discussions by asking these types of questions for e-commerce planning:

“What’s the big launch for next year?”

“What are the cool stuff we can do (or do more of)?”

“What’s the latest technology that we can leverage on to do cutting-edge stuff?”

These types of questions are valid and important, but the problem arises when Brands only focus on these questions and neglect other fundamental questions as a result.

Also Read: What we learned from almost failing before an Indonesia break through

Exponential-growth Brands always work hard to prioritize mastering the fundamentals before moving on to the “cool/sexy/awesome” topics.

They put a high priority on “hygiene factors” before anything else.

Questions to Brands: Do you have your fundamentals in check?

• Support from top management to work with Supply Chain and Distributor to ensure that stock fulfilment to consumers is On-Time and In-Full for consistent high product availability.
• Collaboration with marketing teams, creative agencies and graphics team to ensure that all product shots are of high-quality. The same goes for all the Brand’s key visuals on the e-commerce platform, within their stores and beyond.
• Clearing weekly and monthly content and promotional plans to refresh key messages to shoppers.
• Strong channel management practices and pricing strategies to ensure regular competitive prices while not destroying brand value through over-discounting.

Most of all, since e-commerce platforms operate by algorithmic ranking, they need to do all of the above consistently to gain traction for their Brands and SKUs in order to stand out from the millions of products on e-commerce.

3) Not driving enough traffic to the Brand’s official product page

A commonly mentioned analogy that e-commerce practitioners have heard of many times goes like this:

“Imagine the e-commerce platform as the traditional offline Shopping Mall, and your Brand’s Official Store is one of the many shops in the mall. While the Mall will invest in bringing in total traffic to the building, the shop needs to do its own advertising within and outside the Mall to bring more of its target shoppers to its doorstep.”

Most Brands that fail to grow as fast as their expectations often have the misconception that “The e-commerce market is growing fast and it has a huge quantity of daily active users (DAU), so there is more than enough traffic to give my brand sustained growth in Page Views. Therefore, why do I need to invest in bringing my own traffic?”

The thing is, just like the offline Mall, all e-commerce platforms want to grow the number of brands, sellers, assortment and product categories and it is not efficient for the platform to invest in hyper-targeted online traffic that’s best-suited for every Product Category and every Brand.

So while the DAU continues increasing, it may or may not benefit the specific Brand immediately.

This means that, while it’s easy for Brands to tap on the existing platform DAU at the start to gain a fast uptick in Page Views, it will become increasingly difficult to sustain this trajectory.

Brands must also remember that on any platforms, there exists a highly dynamic environment.

Every Brand wants to stand out and grow fast, and while one of e-commerce’s advantage is the so-called “infinite” shelf-space, one must remember that there are limits to online shoppers’ attention span.

The wisest Brands understand this and invest in driving quality traffic consistently to their Official Stores or Product Pages on the e-commerce platform.

They have a good mix of “re-targeting high-affinity customers” and “acquiring new relevant customers” traffic strategy. They constantly perform optimizations to continuously improve the quality of the traffic. Plus, they don’t simply focus on the quantity but equally devote attention to the quality.

Finally, these exponential-growth Brands leverage on both their Paid and Owned Media assets to do an always-on traffic strategy instead of just waiting to only drive traffic during the major campaigns by the e-commerce Platform.

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In reality, it is definitely not easy to immediately implement the above practices.
It requires strong willingness & commitment to shift mindsets and make short-term trade-offs and sacrifices, especially from the top-level decision-makers.

But, from experience, it is very much possible, and it takes courageous talents & executives in any Brands to start the ball rolling (& keep it so).

“Rely not on your euphoric vision, but make it your victorious reality”.

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Photo by rawpixel on Unsplash

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

The post Why brands fail on e-commerce and what they can do about it appeared first on e27.

Orangewood Labs was part of Y Combinator’s Winter 2018 batch

Aditya Bhatia, an alumnus of National Institute of Design (Ahmedabad), used to work as a furniture designer in Delhi, but was wasn’t happy with the way the whole industry functioned. He realised that most of the custom pieces being designed and created at traditional design studios would take two to three months to finish and it also involved a lot of manual labour.

Bhatia was determined to rewrite the whole concept, and knew that new-age technologies could be leveraged to bring in a change. He went to his friends Abhinav Das and Akash Bansal, both have prior startup building experience, and brainstormed.

“We started thinking of making the whole process better and thought of making a smart CNC (computer numerical control) router which can cut pieces of wood very fast and very precisely,” Das shares the story with e27. “This ended up in the founding of Orangewood Labs.”

Established in 2017, Noida (near Delhi)- and California-based Orangewood is a design-led startup that creates customised furniture on demand, using robotics. The company, which follows a zero-inventory model, says it can make furniture within a few hours of receiving the order from the client and can ship it the same day. Orangewood’s robots are cheaper, light-weight, and easier to deploy, says Das. Since these robots are connected to the internet, it is easy to run applications on the cloud and operate remotely.

“With the ability to create custom furniture on demand, we can help you get that unique look that sets you apart from the rest,” Das claims. “Using robots for crafting the furniture pieces gives a millimetre level accuracy. We have a virtually limitless supply of fresh designs from designers all over the world.”

Also Read: He built a robotics startup with just US$100 and no prior experience; It has now won some top e-tailers

Most of Orangewood’s customers are enterprises, which are in need of custom furniture but don’t want to wait two to three months getting it done. The startup is also working with several co-working spaces in India to design furniture for them. “As of now, we follow a services model, where the customer pays a monthly or per operation fee,” says Das, who is the CEO of the startup.

Orangewood targets businesses in the countries like the US, Europe and India.

The tech venture, which is currently based in California, was part of Y Combinator’s (YC) Winter 2018 batch. The YC experience was very rewarding, adds Das, since the trio got an opportunity to meet in person most high-profile entrepreneurs they follow and admire.

“But getting into YC is really hard, with the number of applications increasing every year (the Winter 2019 has 10,000 applications). Thankfully, we got into it. We learnt lots of things from YC partners,” he says.

Das, who holds a Mechanical and Automation Engineering Degree from Guru Govind Singh Indraprastha University (Delhi) is not new to the startup world. In 2009, he founded a startup called Evomo, which built rural utility vehicles. The startup, however, ceased operations in 2015.

“But the whole experience of building ultra low-cost trucks helped me build better machines, and it came in handy when we started Orangewood,” he smiles. “Overall, startups are an evolving science and when you build things that have not been built before, you should know where to fail. We are making less mistakes since we have the experience of failing in the previous venture.”

Talking about the robotics industry in Asia, Das says that robots are not as popular as they should be in the industry at large. Just like computers in the 60’s, robots are expensive and still require trained professionals to handle them.

“Asia is doing as good as some of the developed nations when it comes to robotics, with China leading. India is slow in terms of adoption and its is still expensive to deploy and use robots here. Most SMEs are aware that they would become obsolete if they don’t move towards more automation. But access to capital for most SMEs in India is still a problem,” he adds. “We want to change that, starting with furniture industry. Having said that, India is a very good test bed and it’s now easier for us to develop technology here.”

Also Read: A novel approach to onboarding

Finding experienced hardware talent in India is hard, admits Das. “However, we have been quite lucky to have an awesome team which is not afraid to push the boundaries. Most of our team members are fresh graduates and are happy to learn new skills as we grow.”

In addition to YC, a few funds and angels have also invested in Orangewood, and the startup would be raising the next round soon.

“Its been a roller coaster ride till now, the very thought that your creations will have a huge impact on how humanity functions is awesome,” he concludes.

The post This robotic startup can make custom furniture on demand within few hours of getting your order appeared first on e27.

Flourishing in the “same same but different” continent

Between the Asian and Western (US and Europe) markets, the latter was once considered the more lucrative option of the two whereas the former was dubbed as slow-paced and laggard.

But this concept has changed dramatically over the past decade.

More and more international giants have steadily set foot on the Asian soil and are continuing to do so.

Asia now holds many profitable business prospects given its changing economic scenario — the steady progression of its countries are now leading more people to embrace technology.

Hence, there is a huge untapped potential in the developing Asian markets due to the surplus of mobile devices, internet accessibility, and cloud technology.

That being said, the big commercial ventures that have been successful in the Western markets have not yet been able to obtain a stronghold in Asian markets.

In fact, many businesses have tasted failure when they set foot there.

Why? That is because they have failed to alter themselves to better suit the Asian market.

See, Asia is a diverse community where preferences change every mile.

The local customs and traditions are so varied that businesses need to make a complete change in their marketing strategy or partner with local businesses in order to secure a place in the Asian markets.

Let’s see what challenges business ventures face when they decide to enter the Asian markets.

1. Which country?

First, know that each country in Asia is different.

India, China, Indonesia, and Japan — all these countries share very little in common from the language spoken to the food consumed.

In Asia, businesses have to use a step-by-step approach; taking one country at a time.

Once they familiarise themselves with one country, making a business mark on the second would be more easy and comfortable.

2. Similar yet so diverse

As pointed out before, Asian countries seem similar to outsiders but are in fact vastly different. Thus, businesses will have to sort out or alter their plans for each country based on local preferences.

Take McDonald’s for example. The fast-food giant famous for its non-vegetarian menus had to insert vegetarian meals when it entered India.

In a similar vein, Subway segregated its vegetarian menu from the non-vegetarian menu to avoid offending Indian sentiments.

Culture is the defining point of making a good entry into the Asian markets.

Imagine McDonald’s entering the Indian market with a completely non-vegetarian menu. Would it have been able to taste success with such a strategy?

So it is simple.

What works for the US and European markets might not necessarily work for the Asian markets.

3. Local competition

If you want to succeed in the Asian market you will have to deal with the stiff local competition.

Local businesses have flourished in their markets because they have a better understanding of the local preferences.

An Uber would not work in a country like Indonesia simply because locals prefer the two-wheeler ride here. That is because it is cheaper and easier to commute in the traffic snarls than hitch a four-wheeler ride on the roads.

This is where local businesses come into play.

They understand the local challenges better and design their businesses around it.

4. Payment options

Asia is a place that uses cash as its main mode of payment. And because of that, many businesses have failed to take off in Asian countries.

Therefore, the wise thing to do is to start accepting payments in cash. Remember that the card-only mode of payment would never work in Asia.

Another challenge is that of online shopping.

Also Read: Why brands fail on e-commerce and what they can do about it

Till businesses start to accept cash on delivery as a mode of payment, it will certainly find few takers in the Asian market.

5. Political challenges

The governments in Asia are very finicky when it comes to foreign investments.

Recently, many countries have tweaked their rules and regulations to be more inviting, of which cyber and encryption laws are included.

With the many cases of cyber data misuse, the Asian governments demand that the customer databases be maintained in their respective countries only.

These new laws on data protection have to be adhered to.

Also Read: On Cybersecurity and Digital Forensics: How Group-IB is Reshaping What We Know

The fake news issue on our social media platforms is another grave challenge that businesses have to resolve before entering the Asian markets.

This, in turn, requires sharing the customer database with the local authorities so that they have full control to monitor content closely.

6. Local mobilisation

For effective business strategy, it is wise for international businesses to align their interests with the local partners.

This will help them initially to gain ground and lay a strong foundation.

The local recruitments and the sourcing of raw materials also become easy once they partner with a local team which will help take care of rules and regulations.

The fragmentation found in Asian countries has definitely been a challenge that any business would face when trying to gain entry there.

Thus, this has to be rectified by finding trustworthy local partners.

Conclusion

Setting foray into Asian markets is easier said than done.

It is beyond the obligatory handshakes and the bows.

Many-a-times, you will need to micro-manage things to resolve disputes at the initial stages itself before it gets into a full-fledged problem.

Asia is every businessman’s dream. It is developing much faster than any other European or American nations.

Just get your priorities and risk recognition in check and seize this golden time to penetrate the Asian markets!

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Image credit: www.pexels.com

e27 publishes relevant guest contributions from the community. Share your honest opinions and expert knowledge by submitting your content here.

The post Top 6 business challenges to consider before entering Asian markets appeared first on e27.

From ICOs to regional expansion to local achievements, here’s a look at the latest from finalists at last year’s TOP100 Vietnam Qualifiers 

More than a pitching event, the Echelon TOP100 Qualifiers are a platform that fosters insights, connections, talent, and funding opportunities for early-stage startups across Southeast Asia. e27 kicked off TOP100 with a bang this year, and we’re all set to visit 17 countries around the region in search for the most promising early-stage startups out there.

Let’s take some time to revisit some of the TOP100 startup participants from 2018 and see where they are and what they have achieved so far since then. In particular, let’s take a look at Vietnam, which is unique for its two startup hubs and which is currently experiencing an influx of foreign-born, ethnically Vietnamese people returning to the country. The country’s startup ecosystem is also doing well as 2019 kicked off, with Vietnam ranking well in terms of deal flow and size, at least in January.

Also read: Vietnam stars in January as e27 data tracks US$1.5B in deals

Eleven startups vied for TOP100 in Vietnam in 2018, and here’s what’s up with them lately:

689Cloud

Selected as the Judges’ Choice in last year’s Vietnam Qualifier, 689Cloud is a private cloud platform that simplifies secure file-sharing and collaboration for enterprises. The company has since gained recognition for its contribution to Ho Chi Minh City’s smart city initiatives.

Also read: 689Cloud secures your files on cloud and beyond

Aversafe

Aversafe is a blockchain-backed credential issuance and verification network. Aversafe’s verifiable digital credentials protect individuals, employers and certificate issuers from credential fraud. Prior to its participation in TOP100 Vietnam Qualifiers in 2018, Aversafe was part of Cofound.it’s initial group of blockchain startups provided with seed funding prior to their initial coin offerings.

CyFeer

CyFeer is a technology solutions provider that focuses in improving the rental ecosystem in its target markets. With seed funding from VIISA, CyFeer’s primary product is CyHome, which provides a platform for property and rental management. In October 2018, CyFeer participated as a finalist in Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks’ annual elevator pitch competition. In December, the company also pitched at VIISA Investment Day #4 as an alumni of the accelerator’s 2nd cohort.

Contractium

Contractium is a platform that helps users deploy smart contract and issue tokens on blockchains easily without technical knowledge and skills. The blockchain company’s ICO is currently live and has raised 860,220,371 “CTU” tokens, which at the ICO price is equivalent to around 57,348 ETH or US$5.93 million.

FINIZZ

FINIZZ aims to address the basic problems in healthcare delivery, including lack of information and access to healthcare profesionnals. The company provides a booking system, database of doctors, and community reviews.

Hand Free

Hand Free is a marketplace for local services, which include household service providers such as plumbers and electricians, as well as other professionals or creatives.

HiKaMi Digital

HiKaMi Digital specializes in designing, developing and producing IoT devices that interact directly with consumers and their favorite products, with a key focus on the packaged goods industries. Its first product is BOx, a connected bottle opener that automatically updates friends when one opens a beer bottle — with the hopes of bringing friends together for drinks. The product raised CHF 19,630 on Kickstarter (around US$19,500). Its next product is the WeCheer, which is a connected bottle opener that provides a gamified experience for the bar culture and bartending business.

Also read: 15 more awesome startups that will be apart of TOP100 APAC 2019

International Alumni Job Network (IAJN)

IAJN is a job market network for the international education sector that is student data-driven and student employment outcome-focused. The platform connects students, alumni, educators and employers, with the aim of enriching the world through shared educational experiences, greater understanding between people and cultures and meaningful careers. In November, IAJN launched its IAJN Connections Professional Network Event, an exclusive event for international student gradautes and alumni to meet one another and develop their professional networks in Vietnam.

Meete

Meete is a platform that allows diners to get discounts with partner F&B outlets with successful campaigns such as “Happy Day” under its belt.

WinCorp

WinMe by WinCorp offers e-commerce users an opportunity to win products they desire but are too expensive for their reach. The company partners with brands in getting more visibility for their products by entering these in as prizes.

WisePass

WisePass WisePass is a lifestyle subscription service platform that allows its members to redeem a set meal, bottle service, Starbucks coffee, VIP access to special events in town and more every single day, all for around $250 subscription per month. The service currently has expanded its offering to over 200 venues in HCMC, Hanoi, Bangkok, Manila and soon Jakarta.

Be part of TOP100

Want to be part of TOP100? Here’s everything you need to know to take your first step toward accelerating your company across Southeast Asia.

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Photo by Lukasz Saczek on Unsplash

 

 

 

 

 

The post We revisit Vietnam’s TOP100 from 2018 to see what they’re up to now appeared first on e27.

Remind yourself of the inner 10-year-old boy or girl and the sense of possibility that exists in their young brains

In 2019, the biggest challenge the global community faces is not climate change, frustrating politics or income inequality. It is the sense of creeping cynicism, a propensity to see the worst in humanity and a “we are doomed” mentality.

This is a big problem because it makes it impossible to actually solve climate change, get involved in the political system or propose an economic idea for wealth inequality.

Being cynical can be helpful in analysing situations to avoid getting taken for a ride, but it is fairly useless when actually trying to make the world a better place.

That is why the image released yesterday by NASA, taken by the now-retired Kepler telescope, is a timely reminder. It should be inspiration to think beyond what is possible. It is an admonition of humanity’s tendency towards narrow thinking.

In our hyper-modern, hyper-speed and hyper-hustle cosmopolitan culture, the day-to-day grind it is easy to get stuck in a “this is the way things work,” mindset.

Then, NASA releases a picture that drives home how obnoxiously tiny this planet earth truly is; and it should prompt people to stop and think, “oh wait, maybe I don’t really know ‘how it is’.’”

The sheer amount of possibilities presented on one photo is a reminder of the many diverging paths any situation can take.

Plus, the history of Kepler itself should make people feel more hopeful about what is possible.

The telescope was originally designed to operate for three-and-a-half years. Assuming the possibility of things going wrong, NASA took precautions to make sure it had enough operations for six years. As the date approached, the team realised the weight of the spacecraft was significantly less than had been anticipated.

This allowed them to fill the spacecraft with enough fuel to operate for 10 years. Plus, in a celebration of physics, the Kepler instruments are powered by solar energy and the fuel is only meant for course correction. NASA leveraged the sun’s gravitational pull for most of the flight.

Imagine telling a cynic in 1969 that human beings would operate a space telescope for 10 years whereby a significant amount of the mission leveraged energy (solar, gravity) from by the sun. They probably would have said, “but that’s not feasible”.

Then there is the sheer childhood glee that comes from the results produced by Kepler.

Kepler discovered 2,600 planets beyond our solar system, proved that the galaxy has more worlds than stars and collected so much data that scientists expect to mine it for years.

“The “last light” image taken on Sept. 25 represents the final page of the final chapter ofKepler’s remarkable journey of data collection. It bookends the moment of intense excitement nine and a half years earlier when the spacecraft first opened its eye to the skies and captured its “first light” image,” wrote Alison Hawkes of the Ames Research Center in Kepler’s obituary.

Also Read: e27 Ask Me Anything: OVO Chief Product Officer Albert Lucius answers your questions!

Space has a unique ability to spark wonder. It makes us imagine the impossible, dream of the unachievable and work against the insurmountable.

Sure, we may not actually achieve our ultimate goals, but the place where we have landed is much further than anyone could ever have anticipated.

Kepler provides a useful example. The final photo has a lot of missing pixels. Why? Because the camera has broken multiple times along its journey. Was the final picture a beautiful tour de force of space exploration? No, not really. But it was really cool, and while today’s scientists may have hoped for a better picture, 10 years ago they never would have imagined even taking a photo.

Whether it is starting a company, saving the environment or helping the less fortunate, the first step is to approach the challenge with optimism. There will be a lot of bumps along the way, so if the mindset is wrong in the beginning, it will be impossible to succeed.

Also Read: We revisit Vietnam’s TOP100 from 2018 to see what they’re up to now

Remind yourself of the inner 10-year-old boy or girl and the sense of possibility that exists in their young brains. Try to emulate the children in our world and approach life with the same enthusiasm. Instead of thinking about ‘what is’, focus on ‘what could be’.

The retirement of Kepler, and the final photograph sent back to earth, should inspire optimism and, to quote Tom Hardy in the movie Inception,

“You musn’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.”

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Photo by Logan Lambert on Unsplash

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