From delivery services to warehousing, many start-ups have led the way in fulfilling the needs of consumers while ensuring their safety.

While the Covid-19 pandemic has been downgraded to the endemic stage, the lifestyle change it wrought in the two-year crisis has not only kept these enterprises in business but led to continued expansion as well.

One such enterprise is Store N Go, which has benefited from the need for e-fulfilment services during the pandemic.

Given that national boundaries are no longer a barrier to shopping, the fulfilling and shipping of orders to customers has become a global industry.

According to Shopify Inc, a Canadian multinational e-commerce company, the number of people who shopped online in 2021 hit 2.14 billion globally. That accounted for 27.6% of the global population of 7.74 billion.

The value of e-commerce sales is staggering. Globally, shoppers are expected to spend a total of US$5.5 trillion (RM25.4 trillion) online this year. That would be 20.3% of all global retail sales for the year.

The potential was not lost on Tee Kee Lion.

Tee, the founder and CEO of Store N Go, said the company started out as a regular vendor on Shopee in 2017, obtaining and selling various products from China.

“Our big break came in 2018 when Alliance Cosmetics Group asked us for help to manage the overwhelming orders for its Silkygirl line of cosmetic products that were coming through Shopee and Lazada,” he told FMT Business.

Since then, Store N Go has evolved into an e-commerce enabler, managing online platforms and completing the fulfilment processes for a variety of brands.

Today, Tee is setting his sights on Indonesia, his first attempt to expand the Store N Go warehousing and fulfilment services beyond Malaysian shores. The plan is to plant a foothold there by the second quarter of 2023.

“The demand for e-fulfilment services has grown three fold since the pandemic began,” he said.

“The number of orders we received also tripled at that time, so we expanded our warehousing space here from 10,000 square feet to 250,000 square feet.

“And it has proven to be a sustainable and scalable move, providing us with the much-needed experience and confidence to even move forward with global expansion,” he said.

Tee said Indonesia was picked for the size of its market. “It is 10 times larger than Malaysia, and that will help to boost sales for our existing clients,” he said.

“Given that both countries are similar in terms of culture and language, Store N Go will also be able to replicate the same success over there,” he added.

Tee said they were currently looking at two types of business operation models when Store N Go landed in Indonesia.

“One way is to partner with Indonesian companies just like ours and introduce our existing clients to them, or we can set up our own warehouse over there with a full-scale operating team,” he said.

He expects operations in Indonesia to begin some time during the second quarter of 2023.

In the first seven months of 2022, Tee said, Store N Go processed 848,000 orders worth RM78.5 million in gross merchandise value (GMV). This was an increase of 15% over the previous year.

He estimated that Store N Go’s operations in Indonesia would generate an additional RM200 million in GMV.