PETALING JAYA: Just a decade ago, taking a pawnshop business online would have been seen as a foolish idea.
But Melissa Poh was not one to be cowed by a negative viewpoint. As one of three daughters of a pawnshop proprietor, she learned early in life the challenges of turning a profit during the difficult times.
“I used to hear my parents complain about how tough it was,” she told FMT Business.
So the first thing she did when she returned home after graduating with an international commerce degree in Victoria, Australia 10 years ago, was to take her family’s business into cyberspace.
She began by joining EasyStore Commerce Sdn Bhd, which runs the EasyStore e-commerce platform that enables traditional businesses to get a presence in cyberspace.
“My parents were e-commerce sceptics. Initially they were not very supportive of my decision to join EasyStore. In any case, the concept was very new back then,” Poh, who is now the general manager, said.
She recalled that whenever the topic of internet was brought up, her parents would always zero in on the many cases of online scams.
But Poh already saw the potential of e-commerce during her student days. “When I came home from Australia, e-commerce giants such as Lazada and Zalora were already making their way to Malaysia. I knew then that e-commerce was going to flourish here,” she said.
She wanted to use her knowledge in e-commerce to help Malaysian businesses digitize. Coincidentally, she came to know about EasyStore, a platform that offers merchants multiple channels to sell their products and services.
These channels include online stores such as Shopee and Lazada, as well as social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Telegram.
It was then that she decided to take her family’s business online. Until then, its customer base had been confined to the immediate vicinity of the business premises in Petaling Jaya in the 30 years since it was set up.
Poh began by building a website to give the business an online presence. Within three months, the business had grown 50%. “We even started to receive inquiries from other states,” she said.
One long-time sceptic who has been converted is Phyllis Teh. Sales at her fjord trout and salmon supply outfit Art of Salmo are rising and all of it through e-commerce.
“At first, I feared that customer service would fall short,” she told FMT Business.
Nonetheless, her company tried the free trial version and were hooked. “The response from their customer service unit was prompt whenever we had a problem. That made us switch to EasyStore,” she added.
The onmichannel quality of online marketing and selling is not lost on Clement Lin. The founder of the Meet Mee Noodle House restaurant said he started with five restaurants and physical stores but during the pandemic he turned to online channels to sell his instant noodles, snacks, bottled chilli sauce and condiments online.
“These e-commerce sites are easy to set up, they are user-friendly for both sellers and buyers and more importantly we have full control over the platform,” he told FMT Business.
Poh agrees. “Any e-commerce platform must meet three criteria. They must be cost-effective, user-friendly and are scalable,” she said.
Beyond the potential to improve sales several times over, e-commerce can also help a business go global easily.
Poh pointed out that a website also helped in collecting data on customers. “This is useful in helping the merchant understand customer behaviour and target the right audience. These strategies help to build customer loyalty and generate repeat sales,” she said.
The value of e-commerce transactions first breached the RM1 trillion mark last year, and most of the business was from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs). “This proves that e-commerce is crucial to enable growth for the MSMEs,” Poh said.
She pointed out that consumers have changed their shopping habits quite extensively after the pandemic.
“They no longer rely only on one channel, just online or offline. They shop everywhere,” she added.