Online shopping isn’t just a COVID-19 fad, it has become a lifestyle. Even as we move on from the pandemic, an increasing proportion of consumers in the Asia Pacific region continue to embrace self-serve and mobile retail experiences.
Indeed, in a 2022 report, 9 out of 10 millennials listed online shopping via their smartphones as their preferred means of purchasing. Elsewhere, in the United States, a record US$9.12 billion was spent online on Black Friday 2022, up 2.3 per cent from Black Friday 2021, while Thanksgiving saw US$5.29 billion in online spending, up 2.9 per cent from 2021.
This holiday season, the digital space will once again be the battlefield where shoppers hang out, and businesses compete. Anyone who wishes to survive and thrive in the competitive environment must buckle up and brace for the biggest shopping window of the year.
In this article, we’ll explore some tips and strategies, illustrated with the success stories of three e-commerce businesses that we were able to partner with to help take their business to new heights.
Create a brand that speaks to customers’ hearts
In the crowded e-commerce space, numerous businesses are selling the same type of products. How do you stand out? Why should people choose and stay loyal to your business? The key lies in creating a brand that connects with your customers.
Founded in 2020, Cheak (formerly known as Butter) is a Singaporean brand offering women’s activewear. With only five products in their catalogue in their first year of business, Cheak generated an impressive six-figure revenue, and they did it by building a unique brand around women in Asia.
Cheak was born when its founders, Olivia Yiong and Tiffany Chng, couldn’t find active apparel that is chic, affordable and fit for Asian body types. Setting out on their own to address this gap in the market, Olivia and Tiffany built a brand that made it a point to listen to the Asian women’s community and what Asian women wanted.
Not to mention, Cheak’s collection of vibrantly coloured activewear fits both the body and budget as well. Finally, Asian women’s voices were heard, and Cheak quickly became a newfound favourite.
But as with any start-up retail business, there is a substantial outlay required to purchase inventory to sell. In fact, this is a problem often faced by newer e-commerce companies who are often not able to secure any financing from traditional financial institutions, as many e-commerce merchants lack sufficient assets to serve as collateral for bank loans, while private equity and VC firms tend to favour disruptive innovators over e-commerce businesses.
Fortunately, we were able to work with Cheak to provide the funds required to finance their inventory purchase. With this injection of life, Cheak was able to significantly fulfil more orders, increase their revenue, and grow their brand.
Also Read: Profitable e-commerce: Making real money in the new year
This caught the eye of Love, Bonito, Singapore’s leading women’s fashion label, which is poised to expand to overseas markets such as Hong Kong, Japan and the US. Cheak was recently acquired by Love, Bonito enabling their female-founded activewear brand to continue to empower millions of women with confidence in themselves and in everyday life.
Scale growth with paid search advertising
When it comes to scaling a business, it’s often said that you have to spend money to make money. In this regard, digital advertising is what you can do to multiply your revenue quickly and exponentially.
Jaco Hardware illustrates this well. Now a big name in Hong Kong’s hardware industry, Jaco Hardware began as a college hustle by its founder, Henry Chao. It wasn’t until Henry decided to double down on the digital venture and seek funding that he turned the business around.
Henry invested some 60% of funds secured into digital marketing – which is a huge sum for a business, but one that paid dividends. Noticing huge search volume for certain products, he started sourcing new hardware tools from across the globe and amped up Google Ads spending in those categories. When people searched for hardware products on Google, Jaco Hardware’s ads would show up and drive visitors to its online store.
As a small business owner, Henry shared that the amount of money spent on advertising seemed overwhelming at first. With clearly defined goals, performance tracking, analytics and optimisation, however, returns on ad spend (ROAS) turned out to be very promising.
Revenue grew 100x in less than two years, establishing the company’s leadership position in the online hardware industry. Henry’s hardware empire now turns a seven-figure monthly revenue and is continuing on an upward trajectory.
Sell directly to consumers to accelerate growth on your own terms
For digital merchants just starting off, joining marketplaces like Amazon, Shopee and Lazada are the easy path to take. To push your business towards further growth and success, however, building a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand is a must. In fact, this is how Archiology grew its revenue by 5x in 6 months.
Archiology is a designer company of home lighting and furniture goods and first came into being as one of the many merchants on the Amazon Marketplace.
Also Read: How e-commerce brands can tap into the US$600 billion social commerce market potential
Among all challenges of being a marketplace seller, commission fees are where it hurts most. Platforms pocket up to 45 per cent on every transaction, often undercutting merchants’ profit margins to razor-thin levels. Interacting with customers, delivering customised marketing messages and offering seasonal promotions also prove challenging since all must be done within platform rules and policies.
The company subsequently cast about for ways to establish a DTC brand and eventually made substantial capital investments in the transition from being an Amazon seller to establishing its own DTC brand.
The pivot to DTC opened up a treasure trove of opportunities for Archiology. On top of eliminating exorbitant platform fees and offering higher profit margins up for grabs, selling directly to consumers enables Archiology to engage in hyper-personalised interactions with them.
With its own online store, Archiology now offers 15 per cent off a customer’s first purchase, a US$5 reward for each referred purchaser, as well as a live chat box to answer shoppers’ queries right away.
This way, interested visitors turn into purchasers, existing customers bring in new ones, and they themselves remain loyal customers of the brand. More importantly, most of them know Archiology by its name, not just another seller on Amazon.
Reaching into the opportunities of e-commerce
As the Chinese saying goes, starting a business is difficult, but keeping it going is even harder. Running a business in today’s crowded digital landscape, the real challenge is to stand out from the competition and achieve continued growth.
As a key funding partner for the Southeast Asian/APAC e-commerce market, we have partnered with hundreds of e-commerce businesses. We believe that the full potential of the region remains untapped and that, contrary to recent reports, there remain great opportunities for growth and funding in the e-commerce space.
–
Editor’s note: e27 aims to foster thought leadership by publishing views from the community. Share your opinion by submitting an article, video, podcast, or infographic
Join our e27 Telegram group, FB community, or like the e27 Facebook page
Image credit: Canva Pro
The post 3 success tips to help e-commerce businesses unlock online success appeared first on e27.