Shopline launches Malaysian operations

• In 2018, Shopline’s merchants reached over 200 million customers
• Will expand its offering to include its range of O2O solutions

SHOPLINE, the global smart commerce platform, has on June 18 announced the official expansion of its services to Malaysia following a soft launch earlier this year.

The startup, originally founded in Hong Kong, enables merchants to easily set up online stores, and offers a wide selection of shop designs, payment gateways, and shipping carriers tailored to the needs of local and cross-border merchants.

It has grown over the last six years to become the market leader in Asia, helping more than 150,000 entrepreneurs, SMEs and large enterprises such as Durex, Bee Cheng Hiang and Hiwalk go digital.

In 2018, Shopline’s merchants reached over 200 million customers.

E-commerce in Malaysia is booming, with recent figures from the Department of Statistics suggesting that income from e-commerce transactions has grown at a rate of approximately 6% per year, totalling US$107.5 billion (RM447.8 billion) in 2017 compared to US$95.6 billion (RM398.2 billion) in 2015 .

However, according to the same research, little over a third (37.8%) of Malaysian organisations had a web presence by the end of the survey period, demonstrating a significant gap in brands making the transition from physical to digital.

Following the expansions into Taiwan, China and Vietnam, Shopline now aims to introduce its portfolio of smart commerce solutions to Malaysia, enabling merchants to quickly and affordably build their own online stores.

With a dedicated team of 12 on the ground in Kuala Lumpur, the platform launches having already helped a number of local brands begin their online ventures, including Slimworld Beauty House, My Kitchen, health food brand Pinnoqio and Six sigma synergy.

In the coming months, Shopline will expand its Malaysia offering to include its range of online to offline (O2O) solutions, which enable merchants to connect across channels and optimise the customer’s shopping experience.

Services will include the Shopline Kiosk, a CRM tool that allows users to sign up for membership with a mobile number or email in seconds, and the Shopline Broadcast Centre, a marketing automation tool enabling merchants to reach customers via Facebook’s chatbot, SMS and email.

Shoplytics is a proprietary smart analytics dashboard that allows merchants to visualise and analyse data related to their store’s web traffic, revenue, product performance, customers, marketing and promotion campaign performance.

Later this year, Shopline will further look to introduce its cloud-based point-of-sale (POS) system tailored for retailers, enabling them to keep an accurate record of store transactions, track and manage store inventories, generate real-time sales performance reports, track staff performance, manage payroll, memberships, and more—creating a unified omni-channel solution over multiple store locations.

Shopline co-founder and chief executive officer Tony Wong (pic, right), said, “We’re delighted to be bringing our portfolio to Malaysia in this exciting era of digitisation for the nation. The government has made significant investments to accelerate Malaysia’s digital economy, so there has never been a better time for local merchants to open their online doors and capitalise on the opportunity to engage new audiences — both in Malaysia and beyond.”

“For the consumer, it’s all about creating a consistent, connected shopping experience that is fast, simple and available everywhere. As we further expand our Malaysia footprint, and introduce our wider range of solutions such as O2O and POS, our mission is to therefore help brands expand their omni-channel presence and ensure seamless movement from online to offline to ultimately retain customers for the long-term.”