I visited Shopee's Manila office in 2018. It's nicer than most SV offices.
Generally speaking, in Asia (and India), there is a cultural tradition of family founders retaining mgmt. leadership, not hiring outside professional managers as in the West. So takeovers have an additional hurdle in Asia of getting mgmt. mindshare.
Makes sense. Lazada also has it's own set of problems for being a marketplace.
Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers. There is great profit incentive/arbitrage because where Lazada is popular - there is great barriers of entry. South East Asia.
High Tariffs.
High Customs/Customs issues.
Physical customs inspection.
High shipping times.
Then the last mile of fulfillment is the issue because of the consumer base being very spread out and not in city centers in South East Asia - bike courier is still most common way of delivery. Postal Mail does not work/will not deliver.
Then there's of course shrink/fraud.
It's fun conversation, it reminded me of ebay circa 2000's. Great time to make a name for yourself.
Southeast Asia is pretty diverse. What you said about last mile fulfillment isn't at all true in Thailand. Postal mail is reliable all over the country and there are multiple other fast and reliable delivery services.
Indonesia is the worst. Recently I attended a webinar that give free t-shirt for early attendees. I received whatsapp from the courier, telling me to pay USD40 for custom and taxes for the free t-shirt. I told him, you can keep the t-shirt (sent from India).
When I told this to my friends, they said it's normal. Sometimes they buy books and got taxed twice the price of the books.
Indonesia has really high import tariff for clothing/garments to protect local industries. The import tax should be <20% for typical consumer goods, and free for books since 2020 (actually I never got taxed buying books from international sellers in the past few years). If your experience is recent, maybe you're actually dealing with corrupt officials/employees trying to make quick buck?
Singapore is obviously an outlier, but Malaysia faces the same kinds of issues outside of major cities that every other country in the region does. Solving[1] last-mile delivery for ex-urban SEA is one of the biggest challenges in logistics right now.
1. Which, in many cases, just means "making it semi-reliable and predictable"
My observation is that the Philippines is a lot worse than Thailand when it comes to delivery. It's a lot less dependable and sometimes they want an additional payment for the delivery when you were promised there wouldn't be one.
The same experience as well. Last month I forgot the road on the address of a order, just the building, in Bangkok, one of the biggest cities in the world.
Package still arrived, as I had assumed. In my opinion it works as well or better than in Germany. Same for the public transport, but that's another issue.
As with many things in logistics, it depends where you are. If you're trying to have a laptop delivered to a small village near, like, Chiang Rai, your experience will be different than if you were having it sent to Silom in Bangkok.
Chiang Rai has train, air and road access, and the roads in Northern Thailand out from it as a hub are excellent too. I’ve seen enough logistics vans here navigating the small number of dirt roads, and I’ve had frozen food delivered to islands without road access from Bangkok in a refrigerated vehicle the whole way too. On the whole, logistics here seem on a par with the UK which also has a few hard-to-reach areas.
There are several points in your comment that don't match up with my experience.
> Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers
Before Alibaba acquisition this was not the case. In fact, it was the Alibaba integration that facilitated this. Secondly, as far as I know it's not drop shipping but they're actual Alibaba sellers that've been onboarded to Lazada.
> There is great profit incentive/arbitrage
Not sure what you mean by this exactly but there's little incentive for arbitrage because because they were Alibaba sellers but also because Alibaba delivers directly as well. So it was more of a marketing move rather than arbitrage. The integration did speed up shipping times however.
> High Tariffs. High Customs/Customs issues. Physical customs inspection. High shipping times.
I have only limited experience with import and that's with tobacco which was time consuming but orderly. For Alibaba goods however, the only one that applies is the high shipping times.
Furthermore for the vast majority of goods below a certain value none of these apply.
> last mile of fulfillment is the issue
Overall true, but there are other issues rather than just being spread out. Specifically traffic, bad infrastructure and operational inefficiencies that impact last mile delivery efficiency even in urban centers.
> consumer base being very spread out
Of course heavily depends on the country with Singapore and Malaysia being far ahead, but Indonesia and Thailand being ~50-60% in urban areas.
> bike courier is still most common way of delivery
If you mean bicycle, that's definitely not the case. If you mean motorcycle, again heavily dependent on the country as well as the use-case.
For instance in Vietnam and Indonesia motorcycles are used frequently, but in Malaysia and Singapore less so. Bicycles are only a gimmick.
Motorcycles are also frequently used for more ad-hoc fulfillment.
> Postal Mail does not work/will not deliver.
1. This might have been true ~5+ years ago but isn't any longer.
2. Even if it was, the post wasn't as developed here as in other parts of the world so a lot of third party logistics providers sprung up to fill the gap and they've better service.
Postal Mail absolutely will not deliver to some parts in Philippines/Vietnam/Thailand. I can speak more accurately to Philippines, where parts in Luzon will not get serviced/it gets cosigned to a local carrier, LBC and even then they rely on the package having a reliable phone number/email address as they'll have to contact the receiver and pay for the service.
Metro Manila is pretty much okay, but, even down south of Visayas (including Cebu, Ilo Ilo/Bocold) and especially Mindanao - Philippine Mail is not used at all, packages are cosigned to LBC to be picked up at their place, which ususally is a landmark like a Mall or town center. But usually Mall, if that area has it.
The Philippines Mail system is a bit of a fun system, being founded by Spain, then USA take over (but not per se the USPS.)
Postal Mail absolutely will not deliver to some parts in Philippines/Vietnam/Thailand.
Absolutely true in the Philippines; I'm in the Visayas. Cosigned to LBC or JRS Express.
As for a "fun system" it's also true that if you are having anything delivered to your home, you had better have a clearly printed phone number on the package. Too many Filipino couriers fail to find your address because of the way many barangays are numbered (for instance, 'Block 15, Lot 48, Barangay X'.
100% correct on block/lot BS. This is why it becomes easier to just deliver to a Mall, or having to include your number all over the package, on the info slip and trying to wrap it up in plastic tenfold to check if it was "inspected" or contents removed.
The Philippines are the most extreme example of logistics difficulties. Even so the issue isn't the spread out population but the fact that ecomm penetration in the Philippines is significantly less per capita therefore the profits simply aren't there yet. Compare that to Indonesia where infrastructure is similar but penetration is much higher and 3PL deliver literally to the middle of Borneo.
>Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers
Really? I always thought drop shipping wouldn't work for somewhere like se Asia, only for places such as US where the purchasing power is significantly higher. Most of SE Asia I would assume has lower purchasing power than China
Lower purchase power, but still demand and no supply. Chinese vendors and dubious quality fills the demand - that's why it works.
The Internet is in everyones cell phone, the marketplaces do local marketing to get a audience, and then they hide/don't make it obvious the fact that it's an international order - fulfilment can be local/china.
Only USA/China, had a good agreement, that, benefitted China for some time with epacket mail being very very cheap, but still at a time where there were constant flights, air mail was affordable and customs would exempt lazada purchases under a certain value in SEA -
Sometimes Lazada sellers would "fulfill" from Taiwan, but ship from China, as Taiwan is an ASEAN nation, and are exempt from the tariffs and such that general China may face.
6. Declares the KPIs were achieved. I am seeing this more and more these days in all the companies I work with. Unless it's SOX, everybody lies (yes, House MD style).
