Lazada

How did you promote the product? What platforms did you use? Did you have any viral videos? Were you the one who was the ambassador for the brand? What exactly did you do?

So at the start, I mean, we leveraged on a lot of marketing, what's that called? Channels like Shopee, Lazada, TikTok.

Right.

But now that we have grown into it, we rely a lot more on like meta ads, Instagram, Facebook, because we learn how to make like interesting videos that are relatable to Singaporeans and yeah, sort of can get quite a lot of attention.

Yeah, we ended up, we got a car in Thailand and then we were like, ah, yep, we need a seat.

So we went on to Lazada, which is just like their online, kind of their Amazon or, you know, their online shopping platform.

And we picked up a seat for, it was 1200 baht.

So it was $60.

Right.

There's only a few players like Lazada and I think Shopee.

And you mentioned the total volume was $157 billion.

I think that's a massive number.

It just means here it is, it's arrived.

So if you order something from Lazada or from Amazon and when the package is in transit, then it's in development.

It's Baba.

And when the package arrives at the door and the delivery man hands you the package, that's the birth of the package because it is here now.

But yeah, I think there's a lot of more downstream implications of this, right? The thing I think about is like how early stage startups necessarily can act on this because the obvious...

benefactor of this growth are the large conglomerates, the Lazada, Shopee, Sea Limiteds of the world.

These are the guys who are clearly in pole position across the region.

But I think having consumers download these apps, shop online, spend more time online, there are probably some second order consequences for other new consumer breakouts to happen.

Uh, one more thing I need to advise is that, um, besides going to the physical stores, do explore deals online, because there's a lot of good deals from the official retailers.

So one tip is that if you go to, like, let's say Lazada or Shopee, right? Look for the authorized retailers that are marked as mall, so at least you know that you're getting from a trustworthy source.

Right.

So, like, if you, for example, on Lazada, they've got the LazMall, and you're talking about the resellers, like the machines, the switches-

Yes

... all of them out there.

I sound black sometimes, but I'm not.

It's on Amazon, Lazada, and all these channels.

There's an audio book that I just did.

Correct.

that? Well, it depends on where you live.

Okay.

In the Philippines or around the world? In the Philippines, it's on Lazada and Shopee.

And, you know, you can get it there.

Chinese tech, cars, apps.

And the countless products that we buy on e-commerce sites like Alibaba's Lazada are now just pretty much the operating system of daily life in large swaths of the global south.

And it's not just here in Southeast Asia, but also in South America, especially in Brazil and many parts of Africa and the Middle East where this is starting to take hold.

Interestingly, this is a trend that if you don't live in these parts of the world, it's It's really hard to understand this because you just don't see it the same way if you're in Europe or the U.S. or, ironically, if you're in China because, well, in China, everything's Chinese, so you don't see it.