Beyond Lazada E-Commerce: Offer & Save’s Store Pickup Deep Dive

Hey Sellers! We hope your Lazada stores are raking up huge sales in preparation for the Lunar New Year!

Today, we are introducing a new 7-episode video series, Beyond Lazada E-Commerce, that will cover interviews with sellers under the core categories in Lazada.

The categories featured in the video series are Electronics, Home & Living, Sports and Outdoors, Groceries, Health and Beauty, Fashion, Mother & Baby. In these videos, we will look at how these top-performing sellers utilise Lazada’s Tools and policies to aid them in their sales and brand growth.

Our first episode features Offer & Save, a retail store that was started in 1997 and had since expanded into 15 stores across Singapore, specialising in Home & Living products.

Compared to the 1990s, consumers these days prefer a holistic shopping experience and online shopping has brought a great amount of convenience to shoppers. This is largely due to the emergence of advancing technologies such as improved logistics, platform infrastructures, and enhanced security protocols.

Offer & Save kickstarted their e-commerce journey back in 2017 when they joined Lazada.

“The business was headhunted by Lazada’s acquisition team”, shared Wei Ping, the manager of Offer & Save. The retail store was opened by his father and three brothers back in the 1990s, and it was Wei Ping who assisted in moving the business online. “As I had zero knowledge about e-commerce, I hired Alex, who said he knew how to use a computer. And he started out loading products into the (Lazada) platform with just a laptop and a chair at back our Chua Chu Kang store,” he said.

Wei Ping’s venture into e-commerce and his trust in Lazada’s team paid off. The one-man e-commerce team had since grown into a six-man strong team, and their early adoption allowed Offer & Save an edge above their competition when COVID-19 struck.

“Maybe we are lucky that we started out early. Once COVID-19 hit us, and we had to shut down all our retail stores, we saw an increase in customers coming to buy from us online.”

With currently more than 23,000 followers on their Lazada store which started from pre-pandemic, Wei Ping shared that one of the best ways to retain his customers’ confidence during tougher times, was to ensure prompt shipping. Offer & Save make sure to ship out their customers’ orders on the same day or the next working day so that their customers can receive their products as soon as possible.

With COVID-19 pushing everyone online, Offer & Save also noticed a shift in their customer demographics. As their retail stores are mostly located in the heartlands, their usual walk-in customers are much older. However, their Lazada store saw younger consumers going onto the platform to purchase their home necessities.

“Wei Ping and his team are always on the ball with campaign participation, receptive to new ideas, and working on content improvement,” Offer & Save’s Key Account Manager (KAM) Joanne shared.

Offering areas of improvement as Offer & Save grows in their e-commerce journey, Joanne let on that Wei Ping’s valuable feedback helped the platform grow and evolve to serve Lazada’s sellers better.

The importance of working hand-in-hand with the brand’s KAM was also a key in Offer & Save’s rapid growth on Lazada.

“Without the help of Joanne, I would not have known how to use any of the tools in Lazada. From zero knowledge to learning how to bundle deals, and her chasing us for fast deals, and constant reminding us of the campaign deadline submissions, as well as pushing our products for higher visuality. All these are greatly attributed to Lazada and their help and guidance,” Wei Ping shared.

Offer & Save greatly benefitted from Lazada’s Online to Offline (O2O) program.

“When Lazada kicked off this new policy, allowing customers to opt for store pickup, we realized that this will really help to increase our revenue.”

With this extra fulfilment method that customers can opt to use, they can pick up their purchases almost instantly at outlets near to them. Furthermore, Wei Ping pointed out that customers can get “super bargain deals due to cheaper price online”, which cannot be found at their physical stores.

“They can also make use of Lazada vouchers on top of the already good bargains!”

Keeping things real, Wei Ping admitted that the transition from Online to Offline did not start out without challenges. However, they got the hang of it quickly, especially with Lazada’s help and the changes made with their feedback.

“In the past for store pickup, our shop assistant will need to check the list manually and need to tick the item that matches the order number. After that, the customer needs to make sure that they press delivered, because if they don’t press it, it will be auto cancelled after 15 days,” he shared.

With their feedback, the O2O team came out with a QR code system. The customer simply needs to show the QR code on the Lazada app and their shop assistant can just “scan it and press deliver, and everything is done!

With a simplified workflow that aid in improving logistical issues and audits, O2O fulfilment has been made hassle-free for our Sellers ever since!

We hope you enjoyed the look into Offer & Save’s use of the Store Pickup option, and how it has helped them to expand on their customer base. Hopefully, it will be an option for your Lazada stores soon. If you would like to know more about implementing this option in your own stores, reach out to your KAM for more details!

Don’t forget to hit subscribe and tune in to the next episode on “Beyond Lazada Ecommerce”!