Rethinking my E-commerce Strategy

Micro/Small or Medium-sized companies? Which is a better target market?

 We Filipinos in particular, have a natural knack for rooting for the underdogs.  I am also guilty of this.  In the area of E-commerce, there is a common perception that big companies are slow (because of their size and inherent bureaucracy) while SMEs or the small businesses are both agile and faster in making decisions and implementing changes.

CEO Charlie Fong likens a big company to a giant who is slow in movement and decision-making

 Like everything I have learned about E-commerce in the Philippine context, the reality is not what it appears to be and the exemptions to the rule happens far too often. Where I purposely positioned my E-commerce site (www.bigbenta.com) to help the small or even the micro enterprises go online and expand their limited customer reach and visibility, I am now rethinking that belief. This rethinking came about after experiencing firsthand, how the  close to two hundred (200) micro and small business in bigbenta.com failed to realize the market benefits of pushing their businesses online.

Like the fictional character, Scrooge, micro and small companies  are not willing to spend a single penny to set up an online shop. They are satisfied selling on social media particularly Facebook. This is a frustration expressed by BigBenta.com founder, Charlie Fong.

 My experiences in dealing with the micro and small enterprises, with some exceptions of course, are a combination of frustration and hope. They (micro and small enterprises) are generally a big fan of Facebook and until recently, online classified ads. Hence, online selling is nothing new to them. They know the cost of doing business and yet, they are reluctant to spend even a peso to set up their online store.  The second hurdle that we faced is their lack of willingness to update their products and submit the information that are needed to properly display their products. For most, they would not update any of their products information nor put a web-worthy product to begin with. To solve this issue, I set up a customer support team in bigbenta.com whose sole responsibility is to set up online stores. Regularly, we check for product relevancy and availability.

 

Most often, merchants from micro and small cannot be reached, resulting to un-served orders. It seems everything looks fine until the first sale transaction comes for that particular Store and there comes another dilemma. 

The Store owner is on vacation or out of town and no one in his/her staff is briefed to handle the order processing or it could also be that the Store owner does not have the inventory pertaining to that order. This then results to us canceling the order and in some cases, reimburse the payment already made by a customer. The variety of issues in dealing with micro and small enterprises is far and wide. Some require quick decision to address while some are not anymore within the confines of our competency as an e-commerce business.

 As BigBenta.com grows, the medium-sized companies begin to take notice and I have the fortunate opportunity to sit down with some of the founders and owners of the larger companies. Upon sharing their views about the future of internet and their business and exchanging notes on what I encounter as I do my business, they politely encourage me to “stop dealing with the small players and instead focus on companies such as them”. The large players as they explained, have the resources to deliver professional product information (images and descriptions), wholesale pricing, healthy inventory, customer and warranty support, product marketing and promotions. I know from my experience and to a certain extent that this claim is actually true.
The above companies belong to the medium size segment, which founder Charlie Fong feel are more ready and capable to get into e-commerce.

So will I go for the medium and large enterprises and leave the small and micro players to sort their fortunes online or I stick to my own original concept and somewhat bleed in terms of operational profitability? After giving it much thought, I decided to pursue both but in varying degree. The large players by their sheer size and capability presents the existing opportunity, the now for BigBenta.com. This is a straightforward business agreement, which will benefit both our company as soon as we launch. The micro and small enterprises presents the future of Philippine online business and by supporting them at this early stage of their business life, their loyalty and growth opportunity (as they grow their businesses) will be part of BigBenta.com's story; taking advantage of the business at present while leveraging for the future.

Pic Credits: Freepik, Channel EYE, Nolan Art, Dazed Reflections of A Diva, Muscle Giant Walking Animation art YT, vecteezy.com, BigBenta does not own any of these pictures. Credit goes to respective owners.

The Filipino Online Store Challenge: David vs. Giant David

Micro/Small or Medium-sized companies? Which is a better target market?

 We Filipinos in particular, have a natural knack for rooting for the underdogs.  I am also guilty of this.  In the area of E-commerce, there is a common perception that big companies are slow (because of their size and inherent bureaucracy) while SMEs or the small businesses are both agile and faster in making decisions and implementing changes.

CEO Charlie Fong likens a big company to a giant who is slow in movement and decision-making

 Like everything I have learned about E-commerce in the Philippine context, the reality is not what it appears to be and the exemptions to the rule happens far too often. Where I purposely positioned my E-commerce site (www.bigbenta.com) to help the small or even the micro enterprises go online and expand their limited customer reach and visibility, I am now rethinking that belief. This rethinking came about after experiencing firsthand, how the  close to two hundred (200) micro and small business in bigbenta.com failed to realize the market benefits of pushing their businesses online.

Like the fictional character, Scrooge, micro and small companies  are not willing to spend a single penny to set up an online shop. They are satisfied selling on social media particularly Facebook. This is a frustration expressed by BigBenta.com founder, Charlie Fong.

 My experiences in dealing with the micro and small enterprises, with some exceptions of course, are a combination of frustration and hope. They (micro and small enterprises) are generally a big fan of Facebook and until recently, online classified ads. Hence, online selling is nothing new to them. They know the cost of doing business and yet, they are reluctant to spend even a peso to set up their online store.  The second hurdle that we faced is their lack of willingness to update their products and submit the information that are needed to properly display their products. For most, they would not update any of their products information nor put a web-worthy product to begin with. To solve this issue, I set up a customer support team in bigbenta.com whose sole responsibility is to set up online stores. Regularly, we check for product relevancy and availability.

 

Most often, merchants from micro and small cannot be reached, resulting to un-served orders. It seems everything looks fine until the first sale transaction comes for that particular Store and there comes another dilemma. 

The Store owner is on vacation or out of town and no one in his/her staff is briefed to handle the order processing or it could also be that the Store owner does not have the inventory pertaining to that order. This then results to us canceling the order and in some cases, reimburse the payment already made by a customer. The variety of issues in dealing with micro and small enterprises is far and wide. Some require quick decision to address while some are not anymore within the confines of our competency as an e-commerce business.

 As BigBenta.com grows, the medium-sized companies begin to take notice and I have the fortunate opportunity to sit down with some of the founders and owners of the larger companies. Upon sharing their views about the future of internet and their business and exchanging notes on what I encounter as I do my business, they politely encourage me to “stop dealing with the small players and instead focus on companies such as them”. The large players as they explained, have the resources to deliver professional product information (images and descriptions), wholesale pricing, healthy inventory, customer and warranty support, product marketing and promotions. I know from my experience and to a certain extent that this claim is actually true.
The above companies belong to the medium size segment, which founder Charlie Fong feel are more ready and capable to get into e-commerce.

So will I go for the medium and large enterprises and leave the small and micro players to sort their fortunes online or I stick to my own original concept and somewhat bleed in terms of operational profitability? After giving it much thought, I decided to pursue both but in varying degree. The large players by their sheer size and capability presents the existing opportunity, the now for BigBenta.com. This is a straightforward business agreement, which will benefit both our company as soon as we launch. The micro and small enterprises presents the future of Philippine online business and by supporting them at this early stage of their business life, their loyalty and growth opportunity (as they grow their businesses) will be part of BigBenta.com's story; taking advantage of the business at present while leveraging for the future.

Pic Credits: Freepik, Channel EYE, Nolan Art, Dazed Reflections of A Diva, Muscle Giant Walking Animation art YT, vecteezy.com, BigBenta does not own any of these pictures. Credit goes to respective owners.

Grassroots Digital Entrepreneurship: Neighborhood Rice & Cooking Gas – Online!

We obviously have seen branded products and high-end items being sold online by large e-commerce providers in almost every part of the world that can support acceptable Internet speed. Here in the Philippines, we suffer from the two outstanding issues that hamper the otherwise explosive growth of e-commerce namely, acceptance of payment from both the buyer and the seller and the expensive cost of shipping. The thing is, online products can be lower compared to Mall or Store prices only if the delivery or shipping cost is kept to a minimum. By buying a product with a higher price value, translating to a bigger savings but having the weight or volume literally light or preferably less than 2 kilos, is the sweetest spot in e-commerce purchase for any buyer. An obvious example of this would be electronic gadgets, which can give a buyer as much as several thousands of pesos in savings while incurring only less than two hundred pesos in delivery cost.

Fabcorp is a new palengke partner of BigBenta.com. The company supplies Solane and Mgas LPG in Muntinlupa City. With this,  consumers no longer have to go their nearest LPG dealer but purchase this essential product online.

To give some context, these dealers are your ordinary merchants found in various wet markets in Metro Manila. We have encountered such entrepreneur in Pasig, the other in Paranaque and the most recent one was from Las Pinas wet market. All of them wanted to increase their sales and expand their market, but with the current product that they have, geographical presence and reach is quite limited.Cooking gas dealers decided to go digital and offer their product online? The catch is the dealer’s price doesn’t have huge savings for the customers, are very heavy such that if delivered by standard courier provider will be more expensive than the cost of the product itself and the customers are used to paying via cash-on-delivery (COD). An interesting discussion and problem solving exercise then comes to play.

 

BigBenta.com CEO and Founder Charlie Fong. His vision is to help Filipino entrepreneus get online to grow their business.

To say the least, a customized approach was developed so that our dealers of rice and cooking gas could open their own online store through www.bigbenta.com, get confirmed transaction orders in selected areas, have their products delivered and collect their payment via COD. At the time of writing, I suspect that they could probably be the first online store of rice and cooking gas in the history of the e-commerce in the Philippines. Talk about taking digital entrepreneurship on the grass root level! BigBenta Marketplace is the only e-commerce platform in the Philippines that features free classified ads (buy and sell), online stores, and service bookings. Through these platforms, it aims to help the Filipino entrepreneur and MSMEs use the internet to grow their busines

Educating Gen Xers’ or Advising Millennials?

At a certain age, learning something new seems to be more of a burden rather than a discovery. They say “you can’t teach old dog new tricks” but if it’s a question of survival, in this case as an entrepreneur and your business hangs in the balance then perhaps survival instinct lords over any inhibitions or reluctance to learn new things.

The growth of the Internet and its mobile counterpart has broken many preconceived barriers in business. Suddenly, almost anyone can buy and sell, transact and pay online, through the use of their mobile devices. The rate of adoption is nearly doubling every year and the Philippine market is experiencing near that, but unfortunately, not quite fast enough compared to our neighboring countries.

BigBenta CEO, Mr. Charlie Fong

As a founder of an online marketplace (www.bigbenta.com) and a strong advocate of digital entrepreneurship, I’m pondering on whether it would make more sense for me to push the idea of Filipino digital entrepreneurship to the current business owners (who are mostly Gen Xers’ that are resistant to change and learning new things like e-commerce) or just advising the Millennials and let their sheer number and eventual mass adoption take the market further.

While it may appear that the Millennials are easier to take on due to their inherent openness to the use of new technology and ease of advising, rather than educating/teaching, it is the Gen Xers’ that represent the larger size of the business pie but such requires a stronger effort in educating and teaching them to adopt digital entrepreneurship. From my actual experience with several Gen Xers’ with their brick and mortar business mindset, they cannot easily move to digital unlike their millennial counterparts that are almost ready to adopt. The Millennials with their sheer number will someday dominate the entrepreneur market in the coming years, but not yet for now.

So the question perhaps given the limited resources is what group should we focus on pushing for digital adoption? The current, bigger player but harder to adopt or the smaller, easier to adopt, but represents the future of the entrepreneur market. Choices like these are never easy and no one says that business decisions are that easy to make. Though I could play it safe by taking on the Gen Xers’ and Millennial at the same time, since I will be serving the existing and leveraging for the future, business conditions don’t allow me to play with that wide capability.

We therefore chose to tackle the challenges of “Now” and take on the Gen Xers’ for several compelling reasons. The Gen Xers’ present the bigger challenge but provides the biggest reward in terms of market share, market size and loyalty if we convince them to take this path. The existing business and reach of the Gen Xers’ entrepreneur are well established and running. Securing their business for the future is an easier argument to convince them to move to digital. The Millennials with their young, adventurous lifestyle will always find digital in all its form as part of their own way of life. They will consciously seek digital adoption whether it is for or work, like its second nature to them. We might not even be required to advice them on how to become a digital entrepreneur. They are in their own ways, hooked on digital already, through their community and social network. The future is always with them.

 BigBenta Marketplace is the only e-commerce platform in the Philippines that features free classified ads (buy and sell), online stores, and service bookings. Through these platforms, it aims to help the Filipino entrepreneur and MSMEs use the internet to grow their business

Picture credits: adweek.com, infinityconcepts.net, fool.com/investing/, rismedia.com