Homegrown furniture brand Omnidesk – known for its height-adjustable tables and chairs for gamers – became an official retailer on Lazada only in April 2022. But by the year end, it sees six-figure monthly sales on its e-store on the Southeast Asia platform.
In fact, when it did a limited exclusive launch of the Omnidesk Essential standing desk, the company saw strong sales, selling almost 100 units each month, despite not having done a full-fledged marketing campaign for it.
The impact of joining the marketplace on Omnidesk’s business was clearly instant.
Since its inception in 2018, Omnidesk relied on a direct-consumer marketing strategy to sell its products.
However, the company’s co-founders Benjamin Huang and brothers Marcus and Joseph Wee realised such a targeted marketing strategy had its limitations. To reach out to the masses and expand their customer base beyond gamers, they knew the company had to move beyond its dedicated e-store and set up shop on a marketplace like Lazada.
But they had one big concern: that putting their products on the ecommerce platform would encourage copycat sellers, and damage Omnidesk’s brand reputation.
“Brand reputation is very important to us, and we were worried about impersonation or misrepresentation from copycat sellers who do not fulfil their orders. We were also concerned about the availability of the right delivery partners equipped to handle our products,” explains Mr Huang, who is the managing director of Omnidesk.
“Thankfully, Lazada was able to allay all our fears. The company has set in place rigorous Intellectual Property protection measures, which include routinely scanning products listed on Lazada. Identified counterfeit products are then taken down immediately.”
Making an immediate impact
With 1 million active selling retailers and 159 million monthly active users, Lazada is the leading online shopping platform in Southeast Asia. To make the onboarding journey for new sellers fuss-free, Lazada provides a suite of support functions – from a 90-day incubation period that helps sellers get started with dedicated support, to plug-and-play decorative tools and numerous, free online courses to help sellers set up a store.
An extensive array of promotional tools is also at the sellers’ disposal to help boost traffic and increase sales. The LazLive function, for example, allows sellers to engage with buyers through live streaming on Lazada. Sponsored Discovery enables sellers to spotlight their bestsellers on Lazada’s search results page, and allows users to discover their products when browsing other similar products on the Lazada website or app.
The Business Advisor tool, which has enabled Omnidesk to determine the products and recommended pricings it should be pushing out to customers, has helped the company to better plan for their promotions on the platform, especially during special double-day campaigns such as 11.11 and 12.12.
“Initially, we had some challenges understanding customers’ dynamics and behaviours on Lazada to get the best exposure and how to price our products competitively. However, the data insights from the Business Advisor tool helped us resolve them,” says Mr Huang. “This feature, along with Lazada’s monthly shopping campaigns, have been the key contributing factors to Omnidesk’s month-on-month increases in revenue since joining the platform as a seller.”
Providing a good customer experience, a top priority for Omnidesk, has also been a breeze with Lazada’s live chat function.
Mr Huang adds: “This enables our customer service officers to address any queries customers have on our products, which we believe are the first steps to improving the customer experience and building a closer relationship with them.”
Thinking long-term
Omnidesk’s success as a Lazada retailer means the ecommerce platform is now very much a part of its long-term business strategy. It has since incorporated Lazada-specific marketing plans and product roadmaps to better cater to the audiences on the platform.
“We view Lazada as an important part of Omnidesk’s operations in the ecommerce space. It also fits our vision of establishing a community within Lazada and making Omnidesk the one-stop brand for workplace essentials,” says Mr Huang.
“Lazada provides access to a sizable market which a seller may not have access to on their own. Besides having a large customer base, Lazada’s marketing tools, which provide important customers’ data analysis and insights, also make it simple for sellers to optimise their sales.”
He summarises: “Some sellers may think that having presence on different platforms would cause a cannibalisation of sales. But from our experience, our Lazada store has provided an additional revenue stream, and overall sales have gone up for the company. We would not have been able to achieve this if we had just focused on selling on our own website.”
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