Retail Congress Asia Pacific 2017: Localize, Digitalize and Innovate to Stay Competitive
Don Zhao, Cofounder and Executive Director of Azoya, and Joël Palix, CEO of Feelunique, shared their perspectives on penetrating the Chinese market through e-commerce.
by FGRT
October, 2017; Fung Global Retail & Tech
Cross-Border E-Commerce Enables Retailers to Sell into New Markets
Don Zhao, Cofounder and Executive Director of Azoya, and Joël Palix, CEO of Feelunique, shared their perspectives on penetrating the Chinese market through e-commerce. The two business partners recently celebrated their two-year cooperation anniversary.
The session began with a case study of Feelunique, a premium online beauty retailer; the video demonstrated how Feelunique set up its sales channel, built brand awareness and improved customers’ experiences. Palix shared his view on how the Chinese market is diverse and changing rapidly, making it critical for Feelunique to have a reliable local partner to help develop and execute its China strategy. For Feelunique’s long-term strategy, Palix mentioned that it is important to include a wider beauty product range for Chinese consumers, which contains both the most popular as well as the niche products to cater to the increasing sophistication of the Chinese consumer.
A major focus of the discussion was on traffic acquisition, as this is becoming more difficult for retailers in China, and requires integrated methods including marketplaces, influencers, social media and social commerce.
Zhao of Azoya sees cross-border e-commerce as an enabler for retailers to sell to consumers across borders. He believes there are primarily two ways for a brand that is less established among Chinese consumers to enter the market: 1) go with marketplaces; or 2) go with a strong retailer. Azoya is mainly responsible for helping retailer partners to start their e-commerce business in a new market, including marketing, supply chain and logistics.