Thailand
Thailand: Lazada ramps up cross-border ploy
E-commerce giant Lazada is scaling up efforts to boost cross-border e-commerce, bringing international brands to Thai customers with improved logistics services and a wide assortment of quality goods.
It is also striving to introduce Thai products to buyers overseas as well as increasing the number of Thai brands via its parent Alibaba’s Tmall Global, a platform that enables overseas companies to sell products to consumers in China.
“We have been operating LazGlobal, which is an international product section on Lazada, over the past five years with products also sold in Thailand to meet local users’ need for more product choices as well as to serve users’ lifestyles,” said Claire Zhang, senior vice-president and head of cross-border bussiness at Lazada Thailand.
Cainiao, Alibaba’s logistics data platform operator, has been counted on to ensure lower costs throughout supply chains.
Thailand has a huge number of product manufacturers, but cross-border business for them is still small. There are 80 million buyers in Asean on the Lazada platform, which will open the door for international brands, said Ms Zhang.
LazGlobal boasts over 70,000 stores from China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Japan, Australia, the US and Europe with a wide variety of products, ranging from fashion to electronics and from sports gear to outdoor equipment.
Jack Zhang, chief executive of Lazada Thailand, said as the pandemic has limited international travel so “we are bringing the world to Thai shoppers”.
“We want to connect consumers to a wider array of quality, trendy products. We want to help our cross-border sellers to unlock opportunities in Southeast Asia,” said Mr Zhang.
Kittipong Yu, vice-president and head of Lazada Thailand’s LazMall cross-border business, said fashion items, electronic gadgets and lifestyle products along with kitchenware are the most popular products sold across borders by sellers on Lazada.
“We select quality and affordable products to serve buyers. This will help overseas brands that do not have local sales channels,” said Mr Yu.
The shipment of products is made in bulk for low cost delivery. It could take 7-10 days for delivery.
Recently, Lazada shortened delivery time from 15 days to 10 days for products shipped from South Korea and Japan.
To improve the user experience, especially among Gen Y and Z, LazGlobal is holding an exhibition called “Lazada Un (Expected) Box”, which integrates art with e-commerce.
At the show, customers can engage with 15 booths that are designed to look like shipping containers on the outside.
Each container showcases global brands from beauty to fashion, from home and living to electronic products.
“We expect to have 100,000 visitors to the event, which will run from Dec 1 to Jan 10,” said Mr Yu. The event will be held on the fourth floor of Siam Discovery.
Lazada charges a 4% commission fee for international sellers and collects zero fees for local SMEs. At least 10 Thai brands are on Tmall Global.
“Thailand’s e-commerce still has the opportunity to grow as it makes up 3-5% of the total retail segment while China’s share is 25-30%,” said Mr Yu.
Source: https://www.bangkokpost.com/business/2028003/lazada-ramps-up-cross-border-ploy