LawEddie.com

 I read an article about a review of the e-commerce company in Malaysia reported by The Star on 20 September 2007. Among others, some of the successful e-commerce entrepreneurs were interviewed. Hope this will enlighten you a bit more…

Gist of part of the interview 

These are part of the gist of the interview:

Marin Cheah from Blooming.com.my, stated:

-the website was set up way back before Window 95 release

-people think that he was out of his mind at that point of time.

-their initial targeted group was college students

-with the first mover advantage the website was gaining many free media  exposures and attention. 

- the website now receives hundreds of orders per day

-during peak season the sale rises up to many thousands per day     

 Richard Tan from Lelong.com.my, said:

-Lelong was set up in 1999

-Internet is an excellent platform for matching people’s needs

-online auction also fit in with the Malaysian culture for haggling

-for the 1st 5 year, the service provided is free

- the hardest partin an e-commerce business is not building a website, but to attract traffic to the site

- the website now receives over 30 million page views and 1 million unique visitors per month

- over 10,000 items are posted per day

- 100,000 transaction taking place per month

Challenges & Hurdles

Some of the main challenges and hurdles faced by Malaysia e-commerce are:

1. low penetration of broadband services -effect: slow image loading 

2. lack of local online payment gateway system – effect: force to relay on overseas system

3. lack of confident in online transaction - effect: slow down the growth of online retail (despite, 3% of the total US retail sale comes from e-commerce.

Successful Tips

1. Uniqueness – one must differentiate one’s site from others (Unique Selling Point)

2. Suitable product -not all products are suitable to sell online

3. Ready to react to surprise – entry barriers to e-commerce are low, hence every one can easily be your competitors tomorrow. You must be ready to change and keep on changing…