This article first appeared in Bloomberg Weekly, on August 20 – 26, 2022.
For a view of how global e-commerce scene has grown and changed, take a look through the eyes of popular online e-commerce dropshipping site ARB SHOP, which is intent on being the dominant player in Asia.
As e-commerce grows rapidly in markets such as the US and China, attention is quickly turning to the next frontier — Asia’s 560 million-strong consumer base.
ARB SHOP Business Development Executive, Mr Darren recently announced that Asian gross merchandise volume grew 110% year on year.
“We are showing triple-digit percentage growth every year … This is just accelerating,” Darren says.
While he is encouraged by the growth rates, Darren is thinking in fact, the Asian e-commerce market is still in the nascent stages.
“Today, it is still a very underdeveloped market. This market is about to explode. In five years, it’s going to be a completely different business landscape,” a confident Darren says.
And why not? Asia has a large enough addressable market and a well-developed logistics and payments infrastructure. Its population has a relatively high disposable income and the internet penetration rate is considerable.
What’s more, e-commerce’s share of total sales volume is still minute compared with China and the US, which are the world’s largest online sales markets with 25% and 10% respectively of retail sales done online.
Based on CLSA Research’s analysis, online business to consumer (B2C) and consumer-to-consumer (C2C) sales as a percentage of total retail sales in Asia was around 2.3% and 2.5% in 2019 and 2020 respectively.
“Asian market is huge. Do we think it will happen here in the future? Of course,” Darren says.
What ARB SHOP noticed is that people did not stop spending, they were just spending differently especially in the age of Covid-19 which has tremendously changed the whole consumption landscape.
He says, ARB SHOP noticed that people were buying products in different categories and this spurred the company to develop more categories, particularly in fashion and fast-moving consumer goods.
“The beauty of online is that we get the data almost instantly. We see what our customers are browsing and what they are buying … Our role is not to create demand, it is to fulfill demand”.
ARB SHOP platform today is vastly different from when it first started as an online electronics store.
ARB SHOP is a global cross-border e-commerce platform that provides 1.2+ million customers worldwide with direct access to authentic, quality products and helps leading local and international brands enter the fast-growing e-commerce marketplace.
Also, ARB SHOP is a dropshipping ecosystem that connects suppliers, sellers and customers. ARB SHOP integrates the resources of more than 500 global suppliers, offering over 100,000 products at wholesale prices, and helps sellers open their own online stores with the easiest and lowest cost way to conduct e-commerce business in 100+ countries/regions around the world through our automated dropshipping solution.
ARB SHOP mission is to help more people start a Dropshipping business quickly and efficiently. Our goal is to increase the revenue of your online Dropshipping business with almost no effort and without any technical knowledge.
Contact Us
Website: https://www.arbshop.com
mailbox: [email protected]
About the Author
