The campaign features new items, free shipping on large items and offline to online vouchers for an array of products and services

by LYDIA NATHAN/ pic by RAZAK GHAZALI

E-COMMERCE platform Shopee Malaysia is expecting an influx of sales this month particularly for bulky purchases, driven by its Chinese New Year (CNY) campaign for 2020.

The campaign — which runs from Jan 2-28 — features new items, free shipping on large items and offline to online vouchers for an array of products and services.

Shopee Malaysia marketing lead (communications) Shino Lee said during CNY, people often buy brand new clothes and furniture, which are some of the categories Shopee expects to excel in.

“We know that during this festive season, people want to upgrade in these categories so we took that into account and introduced free shipping for large items until Jan 21, 2020,” she said during the Shopee CNY launch in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

The e-commerce player’s new third-party logistics partner, Ninja Van Malaysia, also came on board just in time for the festive season, now shipping up to 90kg instead of 50kg.

Other deals under the campaign include “RM8 Prosperity” daily deals on hampers, soft drinks, Tefal cookware sets, clothing and appliances, while the offline to online deals will include 63 food and beverage outlets and services.

“Some of the new merchants are one Michelin-starred Hawker Chan, dragon-i and Purple Cane, whereas the service vouchers included are for massages, car servicing and products like child car seats,” Lee said.

Participating sellers on the platform are also upsizing by guaranteeing Malaysians the lowest prices on washing machines, dryers, air conditioners, televisions and more, with free shipping to Peninsular Malaysia.

Shopee has also added two new programmes to its live stream feature, which has been running since 2019.

The first will be a food review programme, which will showcase eateries from other regions three times a week, while the second will be a feng shui and zodiac outlook by Master Jane daily until Jan 17, 2020.

Speaking to The Malaysian Reserve, Lee said since the launch of Shopee Live, the platform has seen overwhelming response from both brands and sellers, with fashion being the top-performing category.

“Some of the success stories include Tyra Kamaruzzaman’s Beautyra lipsticks that sold out in minutes on Shopee Live, and JVJ Online — a cross-border seller which utilised live streaming and redirected traffic to its store — contributing 95% of its total orders,” she said.

In the third quarter of 2019, Shopee’s year-on-year gross merchandise value for all seven markets increased by 69.9%, while gross orders surged by 102.8% from 158.5 million to 321.4 million.

The CNY 2020 sale was curated as part of the platform’s strategy to maintain growth.

“Major shopping festivals like the ‘11.11’ and ‘12.12’ campaigns support our growth, as evident in the 180,000 hours that were clocked across Shopee Live streams over the entire ‘12.12 Birthday Sale’ period, as users engaged their favourite brands and sellers in real-time to get information on the latest hot-selling products,” Lee added.

She said the brand will continue to focus on its seven markets for now, while continuing to make the shopping platform accessible for all.

To help retailers and small and medium enterprises grow, the e-commerce player will drive the convergence of online and offline retail by on-boarding more brands on Shopee.

It will also reduce the challenges for sellers to come online by assisting them with “Shopee University”, a free sellers’ workshop.