Wish.com, DHL, and Commerce DotAsia have collaborated to bring a briefing to merchants about their products in early October, which act as springboard for merchants to sell to the US and European markets, as well as allowing further options for merchants looking to expand into the rest of Southeast Asia.
The first speaker, Levin Ding of Wish.com’s China division, provided an introduction for Wish.com, who is a fairly young player in the marketplace segment having started only five years ago. However, this San Francisco-based company, whose founders Peter Szulczewski and Danny Zhang hail from backgrounds in Google and Yahoo respectively, now lays claim to being the best at what it does in North America.
Ding, who had presented in Mandarin, shared several statistics on mobile usage in North America, such as the trend that people are moving away from PCs and towards mobile devices, though this trend was not unique to North America.
“In the US alone, there are 2.8 billion mobile phone users, of which 2.21 billion use their phones to surf the Internet. This group of users spend an average of 2.7 hours on their phones, with Wish users there spending an average of 32 minutes on the platform,” noted Ding, before leading into her explanation about the Wish series of apps, which cater to separate product categories, as well as the terms of joining the company as a merchant partner.
The main Wish app has all of its products, while ‘Geek’ is for gadgets and tech. ‘Mama’ and ‘Home’ respectively cater parenting goods and makeup/accessories, while Home is, as the app’s name suggests, for home decor and household items.
Merchants who were interested to join WIsh as a partner were instructed to head to merchant.wish.com, sign up, provide the requested information, and wait for the results of the company’s audit. Upon passing the audit, they can start uploading their products and sell on Wish.
Ding explained that there was a 15% commission fee for every product sold, and that there were a list of items which were not allowed to be sold on Wish. These included the standard bans such as weapons, tobacco, lighters, chemicals, and pornography, as well as items such as child leashes, safety helmets, plant seeds, and food. Imitation items and fake goods are prohibited as well, and only authorised resellers can sell items from other brands.
The second speaker for the day was Kamal Nathan from DHL e-Commerce Malaysia, who provided an overview of the Southeast Asian market as part of the Asia-Pacific market, and talked about the services provided by DHL e-Commerce.
DHL e-Commerce is one of the four business units owned by DHL that form the group’s network in the regional logistics industry, with the other three being DHL Express which focuses on time-definite transportation, DHL Supply Chain, and DHL Global Forwarding.
Kamal remarked that the SEA market was a focal point for the group for the Asia-Pacific market, due to the group identifying the SEA market as “a growing market with high potential”. He added that the regional economies of ASEAN are also expected to integrate further with the removal of tariffs and trade barriers, which would promote the free flow of goods, funds, and people. This leads to an expected surge in cross-border activities.
DHL e-Commerce, which Kamal represented, offers customer-centric solutions across the merchant’s e-Commerce process chain, from first-mile delivery, to cross-border shipping, to fulfilment and last-mile delivery.
These come under the group’s Packet and Packet Plus offerings, which ship items up to 2kg in weight with maximum dimensions of 90cm by 90cm by 90cm, with the rate increasing per every 10g, starting from 10g.
DHL e-Commerce will also have a new portal that provides client side and merchant side access, with client side access allowing the tracking of the shipment, and the merchant side access allowing for the tracking of all their shipments at a glance.
Of course, there are still restricted items, such as lithium batteries and flammable goods. However, liquids and creams (such as beauty products) are judged on a case-by-case basis.
The third speaker, Jack Leong, spoke about his company, Commerce DotAsia, which is in charge of the Web2Ship site and service. Web2Ship provides the service of a single point of access for merchants to consolidate their marketplace platform activities into one dashboard or control center.
At the same time, the service also provides inventory and storage options, as well as shipping and tracking options. The service is integrated with almost a dozen local marketplaces, as well as six regional logistics providers.
The service offers two packages, namely their Premium and their Elite packages. The Elite package, which is the more basic package, will offer product listing preparation, photography assistance, listing to all integrated marketplaces, sales notifications, customer service assistance, cloud inventory control, and logistics services, at a charge of 5% commission from the sale of a product.
The Premium package covers everything the Elite package has, while also providing warehousing solutions as well as pick-and-pack services. This comes at an additional charge of another 5%, putting the cost of the Premium package at 10% of the product sold.
“The money will go back to the merchant first, with the total cost of our services billed to the merchant as a monthly invoice. This makes the transaction more transparent to the merchant, as well as safer for the merchant,” noted Leong, who stressed that the services provided are to allow merchants to focus on growing their business.
Web2Ship also works with international marketplaces, listing Amazon, Ebay, and Wish as partners. However, shipping costs, be they international or domestic, are borne by the merchant.
After Leong’s presentation, the session adjourned for refreshments and networking.