Shopline, 7-Eleven team up to help Taiwan online retailers reach customers in Southeast Asia

This week, Shopline announces partnership with 7-Eleven to enable Taiwanese retailers to ship their goods directly to 7-Eleven stores in Hong Kong, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Customers in these places are also able to collect their orders in three days, at the soonest, while paying a lower delivery fee.

In Taiwan, most retailers are used to shipping their goods to convenience stores for local shoppers to go and pick them up, but it’s usually not that easy when they want to serve shoppers from overseas.

To sell their products beyond Taiwan, online retailers often need to set up their own logistics network and payment gateway, and some of them simply cannot afford to so.

Fiona Lau, co-founder and COO of Shopline, says many Taiwanese retailers in fact have the potential to expand into foreign markets. She points out that on Shopline’s platform, more than 40% of these online sellers have received orders from overseas, despite their focus on the Taiwan market.

Founded in 2013, the Hong Kong-based company builds an e-commerce platform helping retailers launch and manage their online shops. It announces expansion into Taiwan in 2015 and since then has helped more than 120 thousand local retailers start their online business, including Taiwanese tea brand Jing Sheng Yu, skincare brand Greenvines, and accessory brand Lucy’s.

Shopline’s collaboration with 7-Eleven makes it easier for online sellers to ship their products abroad. What they need to do is to print out a special label from the store management system, paste it on the product, and send the product to 7-Eleven’s distribution center.

While the product is on its way to the aforementioned three destinations, the seller is able to track the shipment and enhance logistical efficiency.

Besides 7-Eleven stores, Shopline says it also gives shoppers the option to pick up their orders at a number of coffee shops, drugstores, and banks, with which it has signed partnership.

By bringing convenience to shoppers, Lau says her company helps encourage spending on products from Taiwan.

Working with 7-Eleven is part of Shopline’s wider effort to help the online retailers on its platform sell their products internationally, especially to Southeast Asia, a market that sees a rapid growth in e-commerce.

Taiwan Institute of Economic Research and Google forecast that the size of the e-commerce market in Southeast Asia will grow from $23 billion in 2018 to $102 billion in 2025.

Shopline says it aims to build a robust ecosystem for cross-border e-commerce for retailers by expanding its partner network in logistics, payment, warehousing, and so on.

The company now has offices in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, China, and Malaysia.

〔Original :Meet Startup @ TW〕
https://meet.bnext.com.tw/intl/articles/view/46520