The transition from a brick-and-mortar store to an e-commerce website is not easy and can be intimidating. However, this digital transformation cannot be delayed any further. 

For many major brands, the global pandemic has accelerated the pre-death stage of retail stores into a possible extinction moment. For a smooth transition into online selling, retailers need to keep up with the digital transformation and the only way to go is to adapt no-code to run their e-commerce store.

From brick-and-mortar to selling online in seven simple steps:

Know your customer 

The one valuable thing about having a brick-and-mortar store is the face to face interactions you have with your customers on a regular basis. You can use this as an advantage to leverage your e-commerce store as knowing your customers behind a screen requires a lot of research and resources.

Since you are very well aware of what kind of customers you need to target, their purchasing habits, their likes and tastes, you have a head start to sell online. 

You can start from your existing customer base and your online store by:

• Talking to them and asking them if would they be interested in the online store?
• Collect their emails: for marketing purposes.
• Spread the word: they could help you set it up and might know of someone that would be interested in shopping online at your store.

Also Read: Cultural transformation and digital transformation go hand-in-hand. Here’s how to get it right

Select your products

As a retailer, you already have an existing range of products at the brick-and-mortar store and are aware of best-selling and underperforming products. This information will help you made decisions when you set up your online store. Here are a few options of products that you can choose from to sell online:

• Best-selling products: These are the set of products that already perform well in your retail store.
• Underperforming items: These are the range of products that are hard to sell in person. You can boost the sale of these products with a new online audience.
• Unique products: These are the products that must be highlighted in your online store, as uniqueness pays off for handcrafted or personalised products.
• Make it a niche store: You can focus on just one product category for your online store. This will be easier to market as well. 

After finalising on what you’ll be selling, it is time to move straight into the action, and start to set up your first e-commerce store.

Select an option to set up your online store

There is a misconception among many business owners that online stores are difficult to create and manage. With the existence of platforms, who provide the opportunity to retailers to create, manage and customise an online store with zero technical knowledge, starting an online store in 2021 is much easier and affordable.

These platforms are designed for anyone who is new to e-commerce and provides all the necessary solutions such as hosting your website, designing your online store, adding products and so on. These platforms are:

• Shopify: the most popular e-commerce platform out there as it provides the most versatile options.
• Woocommerce: This is a free plug in of WordPress
• Wix: One of the most popular drag-and-drop website builders, Wix gives a lot of clean templates to choose from. 

Depending on your priorities, you can choose to set up your own website with the above platforms or to sell on Amazon, Flipkart or Ebay. Choose what makes sense for your business and products.

Choose a suitable payment method

Choose a suitable platform that will serve as a financial bridge between you and your customer. This step is important as choosing a payment method allows customers to complete their purchase on the site itself. 

You can subscribe to a third-party service, these are the options:

• Paypal or Paytm is the most popular, Paypal and Paytm (India) offers online checkout experiences, invoicing, and in-person payments.
• Stripe is a payment solution created specifically for e-commerce that allows for international payments and a lot of customisation
• Square provides both online payment processing solutions and Point of Sale hardware (card readers, stands) for brick-and-mortar businesses.

To subscribe to the above payment platform, you first need to create an account and then connect your bank account to the payment processing account. While making the choice, make sure to keep in mind the fees and the features of each platform.

Also Read: In August, digital transformation took centre stage as startup investors embraced a whole new normal

Set up a backend workflow option

The make-or-break factor of an e-commerce business is the backend workflow which is essentially the processes that take place to ensure smooth delivery of the product to the hands of the customer. From accounting to the management of vendors and inventory, the backend processes are many.

For any brick-and-mortar store to transition into an e-commerce website, adopting a no-code approach is a no brainer. Currently, companies understand how crucial the mobile-first approach is when it comes to serving and communicating with their audiences. With e-commerce workflow automation, streamlining processes helps with both efficiency and productivity. 

Here are the major no-code process automation platforms that you can choose from:

• Quixy is a leading No-Code Process Automation Platform that simplifies business with which repetitive operations can be automated and streamlined. It offers automation of management of vendors and inventory, addressing grievances and returns, accounting, fulfilment of orders and more.
• Quickbase is an application development platform that helps businesses accelerate the continuous innovation of unique processes by enabling citizen development at scale across one common platform.
• Mendix low-code application development platform offers building, deploying, and operating enterprise-grade applications.

Pick a convenient shipping option

This step depends on how much control you want to have on the shipping process. You can either handle the shipping yourself or contract a third party service to do it for you.

By managing the shipping yourself, you will be able to control the packaging of products, manage your own schedule, and deliver according to your needs and capacity. The problems you will have to deal with are handling taxes and fees, managing warranty-related issues and doing all the manual work by yourself.

By using a third-party shipping service, the company will store and manage inventory at their location, package your products and ship it to customers. The problems associated with this are the limited packaging options, extra costs and less control over your business.

If you are handling small quantities of products it makes sense to manage the shipping yourself. If you’re selling in large quantities, the amount of time and money you can save by using a fulfilment warehouse can quickly add up.  You can choose your preferred shipping option by carefully considering factors such as your budget, availability and the nature of your products.

Also Read: Why brick and mortar shops are here to stay

Build a strong online presence to attract new customers

Build an online presence with different social media platforms to reach new audiences and to make them aware of the existence of the your online store and products. Engage different audience members through Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and other platforms to promote your products, communicate current offers or discounts, address relevant grievances and questions.

Post regularly and encourage clients to share their pictures, videos or feedback about products. You can also make use of other digital strategies such as email marketing or online ads to reach a segment of your audience.

The above steps and tools have helped us at Purplenooks in selling my artwork online. Using no-code platforms has allowed me, a person who doesn’t have the slightest notion of programming, to smoothly run my business every day. I am sure these steps will help you set up any business online with a great amount of ease!

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Over the last couple of weeks, we’ve been working on verifying the investors on the e27 platform.

Being a verified investor means that there are people managing the investor profile in an official capacity. More than just reassurance that these are legitimate investor profiles, it also means that e27 Pro members can directly engage with these investors via the Connect feature.

Check out these ten verified investors that you can connect with for advice, mentorship, and fundraising opportunities”

GAOGAO Pte. Ltd.
Stages: Pre-See, Seed
Verticals: Healthcare, Advertising, Automotive, Manufacturing, Trading, HR, Food, Education, Enterprise Solution, SaaS, etc.
Investment Range: USD 50K-200K
Straight from GAOGAO: GAOGAO is a startup studio based in Southeast Asia. Starting this year, we are also planning to invest in startups. We offer consultancy and software development especially for new startups & for businesses accelerating their DX (digital transformation). We match curated top talents to be blended with our client’s in house team and offer end-to-end execution for client success.  To provide maximum flexibility and support, especially to early-stage startups, we offer equity-based payment options. Under this model, companies that do not have the cash but are in need of our resources can pay us in shares instead. We are currently headquartered in Singapore with offices in Bangkok and Japan.
Connect with them

Widuri Capital Management
Stages: Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Education, Healthtech
Investment Range: USD 1M – USD 5M
Straight from Widuri Capital Management: Widuri Capital is a private equity management company licensed and regulated by the Securities Commission of Malaysia. We invest in businesses that we understand, emphasising on preserving and growing investors’ capital. Our business networks and value-centric investment strategies are honed by decades of industrial and regulatory experience. Our advisory board and management represent a combined track record of more than 50 years’ experience in investment and operations across various industries.
Connect with them

Northeast Venture Capital Fund
Stages: Series A, Series B
Verticals: Agritech, Consumer, E-commerce, Energy, Enterprise Solution, Food & Beverage, Healthtech, Medtech, Travel
Investment Range: USD 33K – USD 1.35M
Straight from Northeast Venture Capital Fund: NEDFi Venture Capital Limited (NVCL), is formed with the objective of acting as Investment Manager to Venture Funds. NVCL was incorporated under the provisions of the Companies Act 2013 on 2nd August 2016. NVCL is a wholly owned subsidiary of North Eastern Development Finance Corporation Limited(NEDFi), a Public Financial Institution and registered as an NBFC (NDSI) with RBI. NEDFi with its network of branches has more than 21 years of experience in financing various projects of varied sizes in the NER and NVCL has direct lineage of NEDFi.
Connect with them

Philips Ventures
Stages: Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Healthtech, Medtech
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from Philips Ventures: Philips Ventures’ focus areas span the health continuum, from healthy living to prevention, diagnosis, treatment and home care – and from hardware through to services.
Connect with them

SEAbridge Partners Pte Ltd

Stages: Series B, Series C & Above
Verticals: Advertising, E-commerce, Finance, Internet of Things, Software as a Service
Investment Range: Not Specified
Straight from SEAbridge Partners Pte Ltd: SEAbridge is a leading technology M&A advisory and investment firm in Asia. They advise local technology companies on their fund raising and exit strategies. They aim to be the trusted financial adviser to the best technology companies in Asia, helping them grow and eventually exit.
Connect with them

Creation Investments
Stages: Private Equity
Verticals: Finance, Insurtech, Mobile, Social Enterprise
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from Creation Investments: Their experienced team of global investment professionals with over 35 years of combined international finance expertise work from their headquarters in Chicago. The breadth and depth of their team helps them identify and evaluate new investment opportunities on a global basis. Their investment team is responsible for leading the daily activities of the firm, including evaluating, structuring, and negotiating new investment opportunities, and working closely with the management teams of their portfolio companies to build value through a variety of initiatives.
Connect with them

The Mediapreneur
Stages: Seed, Series A
Verticals: Advertising, Big Data, Consumer, Entertainment, Internet of Things, Media, Mobile
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from The Mediapreneur: Under Mediacorp’s The Mediapreneur incubator programme, selected start-ups will spend a year of incubation to become competitive high growth companies. We accept teams at various stages of the innovation lifecycle – from teams with just an innovative business idea to those who have already developed prototypes and gained customers. We provide different funding amounts for teams at different stages of development.
Connect with them

CPEC.fund
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
Verticals: Agritech, Architecture & Construction, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain, Cleantech, Education, Energy, Finance, Healthtech, Information & Communications Technology, Media
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from CPEC.fund: China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is a framework of regional connectivity. CPEC will not only benefit China and Pakistan but will have positive impact on Iran, Afghanistan, India, Central Asian Republic, and the region. The enhancement of geographical linkages having improved road, rail and air transportation system with frequent and free exchanges of growth and people to people contact, enhancing understanding through academic, cultural and regional knowledge and culture, activity of higher volume of flow of trade and businesses, producing and moving energy to have more optimal businesses and enhancement of co-operation by win-win model will result in well connected, integrated region of shared destiny, harmony and development.
Connect with them

Block by Block Capital
Stages: Seed, Series A, Series B
Verticals: Finance, Hardware, Information & Communications Technology, Internet of Things, Software as a Service
Investment Range: Not specified
Straight from Block by Block Capital: Founded in early 2017, our co-founders established BXB Capital from their passion of emerging blockchain and cryptocurrency technology. Our initial building blocks started with global crypto arbitrage, prop trading, and exploring the APAC, US, India and Europe markets.
Connect with them

Amadeus Ventures
Stages: Angel / Pre Seed, Seed, Pre-Series A / Bridge
Verticals: Transportation, Travel
Investment Range: Not Specified
Straight from Amadeus Ventures: Amadeus Ventures was born in 2014 as an innovation vehicle to drive collaboration with the startup ecosystem. Since then, we have introduced more than 150 startups to our business units and we have developed more than 20 joint projects with our portfolio companies. Our portfolio continues to grow by 3 – 5 companies every year.
Connect with them

Watch out for more announcements of new verified investors (yes, there is more!). If you’re an investor and looking to get verified, find out how here.

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Four to five years – that’s how long Education Minister Lawrence Wong thinks the pandemic will last before we can even look to a “post-COVID-19 normal”. To some, this estimate may seem far too conservative, considering the vaccine’s rapid development and Singapore’s plans to make it available for all.

However, with COVID-19 still affecting hundreds of millions around the globe, it’s safe to say that the pandemic isn’t going anywhere, anytime soon.

But what does this mean for Singapore’s workforce? Truth be told, when work-from-home arrangements were first rolled out in February 2020, many expected to return to the office by the new year. Only a handful thought it would stretch for longer.

As we approach our one-year anniversary of working from home, there’s no better time to take stock of the current arrangements thus far and reflect on what has worked, what can be improved, and what should be tossed out.

Most employees aren’t satisfied – but decision-makers don’t know it

Lark and Milieu Insight’s recent study on 1,000 Singapore professionals, managers, and executives (PMEs) revealed that 94 per cent want flexible work to stay. This sentiment is also consistent across all age groups, industries, and job levels, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, considering its slew of benefits such as the autonomy to plan your schedule, saving time and money on commuting, and spending more time with family at home.

However, does this mean that employees are satisfied with their remote work setup? Lark’s survey findings suggest otherwise. Only one in five PMEs are very satisfied with their current remote and online collaboration arrangements, while 22 per cent are neutral and 11 per cent reported feeling dissatisfied.

What’s more, companies’ decision-makers aren’t aware of this dissatisfaction either. The study findings show an apparent mismatch in satisfaction and perceived adoption among different levels of employees. Forty per cent of decision-makers (director level and above) said that their team is very well adapted to using collaboration tools compared to 25 per cent of all respondents.

Also Read: Work from home risks every employer needs to be aware of

Personal bias and lack of exposure: possible reasons for the disconnect

One possible reason for this disconnect between senior leaders and junior to mid-level employees is that the former were more actively involved in implementing these online collaboration arrangements and, thus, are more likely to view these changes positively.

Think about it. If you were personally involved in starting a new initiative in your company, you would also be inclined to believe that it positively impacted your colleagues. This is because you would’ve likely spent hours researching, planning, and setting up this initiative, and hope that your efforts led to an improvement.

Another possibility is that senior leaders may not be exposed to these changes in their daily work compared to junior and mid-level staff. Whether it’s holding video conferences, co-editing documents on the shared drive, or communicating with one another on messenger, junior and mid-level employees who use these collaboration tools more frequently would run into issues or difficulties, and hence view them less positively.

Regardless of the reason, this disconnect further highlights the importance of having regular check-ins and feedback collection to ensure that senior management is in touch with the realities on the ground.

Deciding on the right digital collaboration tool

So, you’ve learnt that there’s a discrepancy in satisfaction and perceived adoption of your company’s online collaboration tools. What’s next? With so many options available in the market, how do you decide which is right for your team?

The first step is understanding which features your team uses most often. According to the Lark study, the top three tasks among Singapore PMEs are chat/messaging, video meetings, and emails. With the rise of remote collaboration, the study also found that Singapore PMEs use video meetings (94 per cent), file search (90 per cent), and messaging (80 per cent) for up to half of their day.

Identifying these frequently used features will help you select tools that best fit your team’s needs. Are you always uploading and sharing files? A shared drive with large or unlimited storage space might be a top priority. Is instant messaging your team’s go-to communication method? Then perhaps having a built-in chat feature is critical.

With different teams prioritising different features, there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Selecting a digital collaboration tool that’s customisable and built around your team’s requirements is ideal. Importantly, remember to include your team in this decision-making process to help reduce dissatisfaction in the long term.

Also Read: e27’s remote staffers sharing their work-from-home experience

Beyond ensuring productivity, we need to prioritise enjoyability

2020 was a challenging year for many as we were forced to stay indoors and adjust to a new way of life and work. In these isolating times, companies need to look beyond efficiency and productivity and start prioritising enjoyability at work. With mental well-being a rising concern in Singapore, there is a greater need to ensure a positive work experience even when we’re not physically together.

Thirty-nine per cent of PMEs reported that having the right collaboration tool can make work more enjoyable – a sentiment shared across all age groups, but most strongly felt among Millennials (25-39 years old). Enjoyability and satisfaction are increasingly becoming priorities among employees and they actively seek companies that can offer that.

How can employers make work enjoyable? For starters, choosing a digital collaboration suite that seamlessly integrates the various functions like messenger, video conference, docs and more, can reduce the friction and frustration of working in teams remotely. For instance, how often do you get frustrated when you can’t find a particular file, document, or email? Consolidating the most frequently used tools onto a single platform makes working and collaborating much more enjoyable.

My team and I are big advocates of bringing joy to work. Happy workers are productive workers, and employee’s happiness can lead to other benefits such as customer satisfaction and success, job satisfaction, and employee retention – it’s a win for all.

Overall, remote working tools play a huge role in shaping our work experience today, allowing us to communicate, collaborate and create from the comfort of our own homes. And while Singapore is poised to offer flexible work arrangements for the long term, there is still a need to ensure that employees are equipped with the right tools to foster a positive and enjoyable work environment.

Leaders and decision-makers should also collect feedback from their employees regularly to make sure that their remote work setup meets their evolving needs.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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COVID-19 has significantly changed the way customers communicate. Now accustomed to social distancing and movement restrictions, customers are communicating from the comfort of their homes, preferring online and social channels rather than visits to malls, restaurants or the doctor.

This is driving a communications revolution across industries and modes of communications, changing how businesses; both large enterprises and startups, communicate internally, as well as how they interact with, sell to and support their customers. 

Customers are the lifeline of any successful startup. Providing a great customer experience and using the appropriate communication channels will continue to be crucial to maintaining and strengthening the relationship with customers in 2021. To help businesses understand customer experience in the new normal we released our 2020 Global Customer Engagement Report.

The report surveys 5,000 consumers across 14 countries in January and August 2020 to find out the impact of COVID-19 on how they prefer to communicate with businesses. 

Evolution of channels across Asia Pacific

We saw an urgent need for organisations to accelerate digital transformation and adopt digital tools that enable business survival and growth. We also noticed the adoption of newer communications channels while increasing fragmentation in channel preferences, especially in the way consumers interact with businesses and service providers.

Businesses that largely communicated through emails and texts are now enabling their customers to reach out through video and social channels like WhatsApp for instant, convenient communications. Our report revealed a global consumer preference for emerging channels, including video, social messaging and chatbots, notably in banking, finance and insurance, education, healthcare, retail as well as transportation and logistics.

Also Read: How HackerNoon uses customer-centric approach to build meaningful new features on their platform

Among APAC consumers, 69 per cent preferred connecting with their service providers through a variety of options including video, SMS, emails, and social applications such as WhatsApp. 

Video communication increased significantly in Asia, with 60 per cent of consumers reporting using video chat to connect with businesses in August 2020, up from 53 per cent in January 2020. Consumers from Australia, Malaysia and Indonesia showed the highest increase in preference for video chat.

Visual channels and engagement are set to see huge growth in 2021 given the increasing customer familiarity and comfort with video communications since the pandemic. Like Singapore-based startup HeyHi, an interactive online educational platform, that uses Video API to bring enhanced online classroom learning experiences to educational institutions and private tutors in Asia and North America. HeyHi’s easy to use, fully interactive whiteboard with unlimited writing space and multiple screens simplifies the learning process using video, screen sharing and instant messaging. 

COVID-19 also impacted how frequently people communicated with their services providers across industries. Customer engagement with retail and e-commerce providers has seen the highest increase since the COVID-19 outbreak. Over 54 per cent of consumers have made online purchases more frequently as compared to pre-COVID-19.

Following that, logistics (44.9 per cent), education (44.7 per cent), media and entertainment (41.6 per cent), healthcare (32.1 per cent) and financial services (28.4 per cent) sectors respectively registered higher customer engagement.

Communication pain points among APAC consumers

Businesses are not the only ones facing challenges, customers too are having to adapt to the new normal. Our study revealed several pain points faced by customers in communicating with their service providers. 

Globally, consumers’ top frustration was repeating themselves to different people, and calls going unanswered.  Asia has the highest share of consumers (37 per cent) who reported being frustrated when they receive a message from their service provider, but were unable to reply to it directly, which is the highest globally.

Thirty per cent of consumers also reported being frustrated when they were unable to switch between different communication channels when communicating with a business. 

Enhancing customer experience during COVID-19

Implementing a multichannel customer engagement strategy and enabling your customers to choose their preferred channel of communication is the need of the hour. Businesses need to integrate these channels to effectively manage the variables of every customer interaction while maintaining the context of the conversation across all channels.

Also Read: The only customer engagement strategy businesses need during a crisis

Various companies across APAC are leveraging this approach, especially during the current pandemic, to reach customers on their preferred channels, automate resources to create time and address more complex tasks.

Indonesia’s largest telecommunications and network provider, PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia uses Messages API integrated with WhatsApp and SMS to respond to customers with commonly requested information including billing queries, product details and corporate information. By implementing a multi-channel communications strategy PT. Telekomunikasi is able to overcome the barrier of undelivered notifications.

In the coming years, agility will be the key to survival. With social distancing likely to continue into 2021, organisations must successfully adapt to new ways of conducting business and interacting with their customers virtually.  But this will mean little if the experience isn’t frictionless. Organisations that meet consumers on their communications channel of choice, while limiting frustration, while continuously innovating may emerge from this turbulent era victorious.

Implementing a multichannel communications approach and creating an integrated experience that unifies the various communications services of the organisation on the same platform will remain essential for long-term business growth.

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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New data reveals that Asian residential real estate assets are in aggregate now worth approximately US$90 trillion. That means Asia is home to about 45 cents of every dollar of residential real estate value located anywhere in the world. That’s why I believe Asia is an attractive post-COVID-19 opportunity for online marketplaces and technology companies.

We have based our US$90 trillion estimate on the piecing together of an Asia-wide number from more fragmented data looking at smaller jurisdictions.

Asia accounts for some 45 per cent of worldwide residential property value despite average purchase prices that are on the whole lower than in Europe or North America. 

Cross-border transactions

While calculating the total value of Asian residential real estate assets, we also tried to make a reasonable estimate of cross-border residential real estate transactions. Unfortunately, cross-border transactions are more difficult to measure. No useful data exists, except in the case of mainland China. 

Juwai IQI’s best estimate is that Chinese buyers alone acquired some US$202.8 billion of overseas residential real estate in the years 2015 to 2020. By logical extension, scaling this up to account for acquisitions originating in every Asian country (and not just China) would result in a considerably higher total.

At Juwai IQI, we take all of Asia to be our home market. That means we are trying to serve a region with a population of about 4.5 billion. To enable us to scale, we have had to put technology at the centre of everything we do.

Economic rebound in Asia

Asian residential property has weathered the pandemic with surprising resilience. In part, this reflects the pandemic-driven change in homeowner preferences, which has created new demand.

Also Read: How proptech startup iMyanmarHouse remains profitable despite COVID-19 

As in parts of Europe and North America, many Asian consumers are shifting from smaller residences in more central locations to more peripheral areas that offer the benefits of space and a better quality of life. High savings rates, a cultural affinity for real estate investment, and persistent undersupply problems have also supported the residential market.

The recently signed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (“RCEP”) is another factor in the positive outlook for Asian residential real estate. As the pact comes into force, it will also drive new investment in residential property.

RCEP is one reason we believe the ASEAN nations will be among those seeing the most rapid recovery of cross border real estate investment through 2022. Although the pact does not regulate property investment, its spillover benefits will boost the real estate sector.

Independent research suggests RCEP will raise global incomes by an annual US$186 billion, expand member trade by US$428 billion, and lead to its member nations generating half the world’s global economic output by 2030.

Asia’s wealth-creation machines have already begun to bounce back from their early-2020 doldrums. While the pandemic is far from beaten, it no longer has the paralysing effect it once did.

The pandemic has also produced some clear winners. The population of the Asian super-rich is multiplying. The Asia-Pacific held the world’s largest population of ultra-high net worth individuals (UHNWI). The region is home to 38 per cent of UHNWI. By contrast, the Americas hold 35 per cent, while 27 per cent are in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Impact of COVID-19

Why didn’t COVID-19 have a more significant impact on Asian cross-border residential investment? One factor that tempered the losses was the rapid implementation of technology. The industry compressed ten years of innovation into just six months.

As a result, both local and cross-border buyers found it possible and even easy to purchase overseas, including during the most restrictive lockdowns. Companies like Juwai IQI successfully deployed technology to enable buyers to research, inspect, negotiate for, purchase, and manage overseas properties — entirely online.

Also Read: Proptech is changing the face of real estate in Asia Pacific

Data from Asia’s largest economy supports the conclusion that investment fell much less than expected in 2020. China’s Ministry of Commerce and State Administration of Foreign Exchange reported outbound all-sector direct investment was down by just three per cent in 2020. That is minimal, given the seizures that paralysed the global economy last year.

Economic situation in China

Because of China’s role as the keystone economy for the region, its rapid emergence from the pandemic is a good sign for future Asian residential market growth.

Nomura bank’s latest data shows that in 2020, the U.S. GDP fell by 2.3 per cent while China’s grew by 2.3 per cent. That means China may now overtake the US as the world’s largest economy as early as 2026.

Other analysts report that Chinese consumer spending will likely more than double in 10 years, hitting US$12.7 trillion by 2030. That’s about the same amount that American consumers currently spend and more than double the US$5.6 trillion Chinese consumers spent in 2019.

That’s one reason the South China Morning Post dedicated a long article this week to the special promotions developers around the world are using to attract Chinese and other international buyers during the Chinese New Year holiday, which begins on 12 February.

Luxury real estate agent Jamie Mi told the Post that her team recently sold several top-end homes in Melbourne, Australia to international buyers whose key family members are still overseas. 

Her agency, Kay & Burton, is celebrating the Year of the Ox by offering its personalised concierge service to all potential international buyers who make an inquiry from February 12 to March 14.

“To make a decision is not always easy,” said Mi, who is partner and head of International Division at Kay & Burton. “We can organise a chauffeur service, personal interior stylists or lawyers to help them with home purchases.”

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Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing contributions from the community. Become a thought leader in the community and share your opinions or ideas and earn a byline by submitting a post.

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