There is another new online war that has arrived on our little red dot and it will heat up very soon. Get ready for more freebies to be thrown in our way soon!
We had the Uber/Grab marketing onslaught for a while over the last 2 years, to the delight of consumers and part-time drivers. I had taken advantage of quite a number of free rides then. Drivers tell me of minimum income guarantees (up to $500 per week) that were ridiculously high and they could also drive brand new cars for an amazingly low rental rate ($35/day). Alas, Uber conceded defeat and threw in the towel eventually. In the next few months, we will see new players coming into the market to challenge Grab, which has all but stopped giving out promotions nowadays and will have to do so again soon.
Another ecommerce war is slowly building up. This also has the potential to upturn the S’pore online landscape as we know it today. All evidence leads to 2 names who have set their sights on South East Asia. They are Alibaba and Softbank. Both have been silently and stealthily investing into 2 locally developed ecommerce names and pumping in billions of dollars and know-how to upscale the game with a take no prisoners attitude. I am talking about Lazada and RedMart.
Take my wife for instance, as an example of an evolving online consumer. From being someone who just a few years refuses to buy anything online for fear of fraud, to someone who buys so many items on Lazada nowadays. The free return, no questions asked policy was a heaven send for all women. Recently, she bought 4 pairs of shoes and multiple dresses, tried them on after delivery and did not like any of them and returned everything at no cost to her.
I was a frequent shopper on Qoo10 for my electronic gadgets for a number of years. This company was founded by a Korean who subsequently sold the business to eBay. I stopped going to pasir malam night markets because things were cheaper here than the physical stores. Of late, things are becoming less attractive there as the quality and pricing are being challenged by Lazada.
Jack Ma has been putting in the full force of their China franchise (T-mall, TaoBao and gang) into their newly and fully acquired stake in Lazada to deadly effectiveness. Efficient last mile delivery process and mostly zero delivery charges plus free returns have upped the game by a lot, attracting hordes of new consumers to their platform. Chinese sellers are now going directly to S’pore consumers at cut-throat prices and superior service which middlemen cannot compete.
Like Lazada, RedMart has also recently come under the fold of the Alibaba family. They have also begun adopting the high standards which China consumers are taking for granted nowadays. There is really no need to leave your home to buy anything in China nowadays as same-day delivery is a given.
I usually like going to the wet markets and strolling along the lanes in supermarkets to get my groceries the old fashion way, touching the goods and smelling the freshness of the produce. I finally decided to give Redmart a try last week as I wanted to get an item for my cooking experiments (Shio Koji for the seasoning of my steaks) as it was not easily available elsewhere and they did stock it.
As a first timer, I got a big $18 discount. They also offered a free LiveUp membership which was too good to miss as it came with a host of other discounts from their partners like Ofo, Netflix, Citi, Grab, Food Panda and Chope. Comparing the prices, I realized that they were very reasonable with wet market pricing too. Coupled with free delivery, my total bill for this first purchase of $55 (with fresh vegetables and frozen food) was slashed down to just $25 !! They even requested me for my feedback on their delivery service a few days later. I was sold, they had me at “discount”.
Alibaba has an urgency to conquer the ASEAN ecommerce market now, as Amazon has recently set up shop here. Jack Ma has also done his rounds in S’pore, Thailand and Malaysia to promote the same ideology he has given Trump before. By attracting ASEAN to have a gateway into the Chinese markets, he has also cleverly opened up the world to the numerous China sellers already on their platform.
This barrage on competition is supposed to create new jobs and increase commerce for everyone by making the pie even bigger. But why do I have the feeling that it will be more of a one-way street? Internally, China has quite a huge and growing domestic and it does not need outside demand. This will be more cream on top of the cake for them. They have superior ecommerce knowledge/experience to conquer the world and Jack is building the internet superhighways for them.
Wife and I are attending a business study trip to Hang Zhou next month for a 5 days training at the Alibaba HQ – at 90% subsidy for Skiilsfuture :-). It will really be an eye-opener for us to marvel at how far they have gone ahead of the rest of the world.
By the way, a first for me this week, I wrote my first virgin article on LinkedIn this week about my 2 years blogging experience, having put in over 200+ entries to date :
“Blogging : An online website diary containing a writer’s own experiences, observations, opinions. Comes from the word weBLOG
Two years ago, I started my personal online blogging journey.
My initial objectives were :
– To improve my English writing skills
– To have a disciplined procedure to force me to pen down my thoughts in a systematic and orderly way
– If my kids ever want to get to know their old man better in the future, they can read my blog
– My personal vanity project, hoping to eventually create my own ebook
What started as a daily exercise slowly became a weekly habit as the articles became longer (no more than 1,000 words each).
Additional benefits of blogging I gained and realised along the way :
– It sharpened my focus. By concentrating on one or two topics a week, I seek to do more research to gain further clarity on the subject matter(s) before putting pen to paper
– As I put my action plans online, I am committed to executing them. No more NATO (No Action, Talk Only) as personal ego is at stake here 😉
– Ease up my fears of sharing my observations and learnings to the world, even if no one reads it
– It became a therapeutic process for me to crystallize my thoughts and then purge them from my innermost systems. It helps me to stay grounded and reminds me to count my blessings every week
It may look time-consuming at first, but once I got into the habit of doing this, the pros outweigh the cons.
Do give it a try.”
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