It has been almost a year since I last updated this blog, how are you doing?

This could be my last post on Malaysia Crunch, as I will be focusing on a new e-commerce blog at www.ecommercemilo.com and looking forward to blog more regularly there.





Let's continue to talk e-commerce with a bit more fun, and you can connect to ecommerce.milo via the following channels:

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We have heard rumours of Rakuten lurking into Malaysia's market for about 2 years now, and they have finally announced that they will be in for good.

Malaysia is the ninth country out of Japan in Rakuten's global expansion, and interestingly this is Rakuten's first "greenfield approach" - without any joint venture or acquisition.

This also means that 3 out of the top 4 e-commerce companies in the world are now presented in Malaysia, except Amazon (#1). The other 2 being eBay (#2) and Groupon (#4), of course eBay doesn't have a local office here but launched the local site 8 years ago.

If you follow my tweets, probably you are aware that I have wrote e-commerce articles for Sin Chew Daily (新媒體) since early this year.

Six articles in total:

1. Current state of e-commerce in Malaysia
    大马电子商务综述/现有状况

2. How to buy safely online?
    安全网购知多少？

3. Where to shop online in Malaysia?
    我国有哪些平台/地方可进行网购？

4. Selling online: selling via multiple channels
    网上销售：哪些平台最适合你

5. Selling online: online marketing
    网上销售：线上行销知多少？

6. Selling online: delivering happiness
    网上销售：顾客至上

Here are the articles (in Chinese) again if you miss it, or if it's useful for you.

Visit my new blog for updated post on e-commerce statistics

The last time I wrote about e-commerce statistics in Malaysia was 2-3 years back, which you can read it here. It's time to get some updated figures, thanks to PayPal's "Online and Mobile Shopping Insights" study.

Malaysia's online shopping market size was RM 1.8 billion in 2010, estimated to be RM 5 billion in 2014. It's safe to predict that our e-commerce market size is around RM 2-3 billion for this year.

Here, I am compiling a list of important milestones for e-commerce industry in Malaysia.

If you refer to the milestones below, things start to heat up in recent years. Truth to be told, we rely significantly on foreign players to invest into our market. Perhaps local businesses or investors will rather invest into something else rather than e-commerce (which requires long term ROI), haha!

I think there are 3 waves in terms of consumers uptake or market competitiveness:
- Post 2001: Now everyone can fly!
- Post 2011: Coupon madness and group buying war.
- Post 2012: Marketplace (platform) war?

Do leave a comment, and let me know if anything important missing from the following...

Local e-commerce industry seems to be heating up lately. After the just concluded e-commerce fair, we have another event coming up in October...

Bring on the Asia E-Commerce Conference!



Date: 4-5th October 2011
Venue: The Gardens Hotel & Residences Kuala Lumpur

The first ever e-commerce fair in Malaysia had just been concluded last Sunday. Here are some photos and short updates especially for those who didn't manage to attend.

Before we start, here are some facts & figures of Lelong.my.
- Incorporated since: 1998 by 2 founders
- Total employees now: 30+
- No of registered members: 800,000
- No of registered sellers: 10,000 (around 2,000 sign up for online stores)
- Monthly visitors: 3 million
- Monthly transaction: RM 8 - 10 million

Q: How did Lelong get started?

A: I joined Cyber Village as a Web Business Manager under Tony Pua in 1997, selling shopping cart solution and you know, it's not easy to do so in 1997!

Then, I started buypc.com.my (you can call it a predecessor of Lelong), a platform for people to easily browse price list for computer hardware, and trade second hand goods. Techie people are used to newsgroup during that time, so I invited a lot of people from there to use buypc.com.my.

Here's a press release from MyDEAL, key figures highlighted in yellow.

MyDEAL.com.my retains its number 1 spot as one of the most visited websites

After only one year of its inception, MyDEAL Sdn Bhd is proud to announce that it still reigns as the number one online group buying company in Malaysia. According to an internet research website, Alexa.com, MyDEAL has joined in the top 60 websites with most traffic in Malaysia, and emerged as the most visited website compared to other online group buying companies in the country.

Its co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Jan Croeni started this e-commerce company with 5 staff in early 2010, and now it’s almost 100 strong. MyDEAL has also recorded another milestone by generating almost RM 2mil in revenue/ month, a formidable feat for any medium-sized Malaysian e-commerce company.

I have participated in group buying or deal sites as both a consumer and a merchant. Here's my experience and observations from both perspective.



Consumer

Have you been subscribing to a bunch of deal sites? Probably you have unsubscribed from some of those, as it started to look like familiar, boring marketing / advertising messages bombarded during the pre-group buying era.

Bought some of the deals but never / forgotten to redeem it, sounds familiar? You then slowly realize that those were impulse buying, unnecessary spending - buying things that you don't really need it.

If you are in e-commerce industry, you simply can't miss this event! Lelong.my will be organizing the first ever e-commerce fair in Malaysia this August at Mid Valley Exhibition Center.

 

If you are an online entrepreneur, start-up or business owner, get a 2m x 2m booth from only RM 1,500 for the 3-days event! It's even cheaper if you are a Lelong.my Store member, only from RM 900!

As for corporate exhibitors, rates start from RM 3,500 (early bird discount) for a 3m x 3m booth. This will be suitable for e-commerce solution, e-payment, hosting providers etc. Check out the floor plan to reserve your preferred location.

Every time when I visit ShaShinki.com, the Malaysia no.1 online camera store, I can't help to think why it still need a landing page like this?



Nevertheless, it's one of the rare e-commerce success stories locally and ever rarer for the founder to unveil some of his recipe to success.

Dr Koh Kho King, the founder of ShaShinki.com is featured in Sin Chew Cyberworld today and I think it's a worthy article to be translated and summarized here for those who miss it.

Q: You were actively involved in social advertising business, namely YouthAsia (Says.my) all this while. What makes you shifted your attention to e-commerce - group buying business?

A: Youth Asia started in belief of using the internet to bring the collective power of young people together. We actually started with www.theyouthfestival.com -- where we used internet tools to bring together 88,000 young Malaysians on-ground to organize + participate in a fully by youth for youth festival, which turned out to be the largest ever youth fest ever. Then we started YouthSays.com (now known as Says.my) to gather their collective voices to represent them through research + social media platforms. So it was a natural progression for us to explore something related to e-commerce. When we saw the Groupon model (during its infancy -- first 9 months) we thought WOW -- from The Point to Groupon -- collecting people together to get discounts - that sounded like something we would love to do! Its almost in our DNA to replicate it in Malaysia.

Visit my new blog for more updates & insights on e-commerce in Malaysia: ecommerce.milo

Shopping for grocery online seems unthinkable a few years back but some players have emerged in Malaysia since last year.

If you still think that nobody will buy groceries online, try to think of those in the offices, factories and expats. It is pretty convenient for corporates to restock their pantry and utilities.
Other than its huge catalog and challenges in product sourcing and distribution, online grocer also faces its own set of challenges if compared to an ordinary online store:

- The need of accepting payment via cash on delivery.
- The need of shipping fresh or frozen food. (Heck, we are not Taiwan, ok?)
- The need of offering multiple delivery slots in a day.

Due to the reasons above, online grocers can't rely on third party service provider but instead they gotta build their own fulfillment team. That explains why their coverage is limited to certain population densed areas.

I do heard that sometimes people are buying The Star partly to read advertisements.

If you are one of them, flipping newspapers and magazines and scanning advertisements, perhaps you are a shopaholic (just admit it) worried of missing an important sale.

You can't blame yourself though as price hike is happening right now, can't agree more on this, right?

Worry no more! Now you wouldn't miss out a single sale even if you don't buy newspaper.

Head over to EverydayOnSales.com, a site dedicated to warehouse sales, special promotion, great deals, great discount & many other sales information.

Note: Read towards the end of this post for a special discount code.

Like Threadless in United States, RekaTee is an online community for designers and t-shirt lovers.



Designers can submit their tee design and get voted / commented by the members. Selected designs will be printed as tee from time to time, partly based on the popularity of the designs.

Visit my new blog for more updates & insights on e-commerce in Malaysia: ecommerce.milo

Well, China has 100+ Groupon clones (updates: 4500+ now!) and Malaysia is picking up as well on its own scale.

Group buying sites are popping out lately in Malaysia. It's a bit of deja-vu like many were attempting to build a local social network site some years back.

The barrier of entry though is relatively lower to build a group buying site, technically. If you are too lazy, just buy a groupon clone script from here or here.

It's the business itself that's far more challenging - signing up quality retailers who offer irresistible deals, and basically bridging the gap between (offline) retailers and online consumers.

Before losing count, here's a compilation of group buying sites in Malaysia. Do leave a comment if any is missing, so that I can append to this list. Thanks!

My apology for not updating this blog for months.

Have been really busy this year. If you are not aware already,  I have actually started co-blogging at a new e-commerce blog - ecomZen some months ago.

And yeah, this is one of the reasons for my disappearance here. :)

I have a guest post published at Zippy Cart weeks ago, so here it is for those who have missed it.

It was the first time in history that a Malaysian company made headlines at TechCrunch last December. Friendster, the granddaddy of social networks has been acquired by MOL Global, a Malaysian e-commerce (payment) company.

How much do you know about Malaysia?

Malaysia is a country in Southeast Asia which comprises many ethnic groups, with Malays being the majority followed by Chinese, Indians and others. Our multi-ethnic, multi-cultural background also makes us a unique multi-lingual society. A typical Malaysian is usually literate in 2 -3 languages (or more). English is arguably the common language used on the Internet here as many western sites or services are popular and frequently accessed. Some of us are also accustomed to sites from China, Taiwan, Indonesia or even India.

Generally, Malaysians are skeptical or reluctant to shop online due to security concerns among many. We lack smart consumers, as suggested by Danny Foo.

Air Asia did a great job in our e-commerce education. Desperately in need of bargain air tickets? Learn how to shop online and brace yourself by entering the credit card numbers. We need more major players like them, to instill and encourage the online shopping habit into our populations.

Nevertheless, let's not limit ourselves to online ticketing or reservation (airline / hotel / movie). I am not saying that you gotta buy everything online but here are the reasons that you can look forward, especially for Malaysians who never experience buying physical goods online.