Zalora seen to sustain sales growth momentum

MANILA, Philippines — Shopping platform Zalora Philippines expects continued sales growth this year as more consumers shop online and more brands enhance their e-commerce strategy.

Zalora Philippines co-founder and chief executive officer Paolo Campos III cited the strong growth momentum across all markets. As of the second quarter, he said there was a 32 percent year-on-year uptick in Zalora’s net merchandise value, driven by the over 20 percent growth in active customers.

“Such growth will continue to be driven by the demand boom from newly digitized consumers, but also accelerated by more brands seeking to penetrate the market through our omnichannel e-commerce strategy,” he said.

In the Philippines, he said Zalora is seeing a more than 25 percent growth in active customers.

Given its large domestic market and millennial and Gen-Z consumers, he said the Philippines is considered an important market and strategic pillar of growth for Zalora in Southeast Asia.

While e-commerce is expected to continue to grow as more people rely on it for making purchases, there are challenges when it comes to managing payments and understanding the customers’ preferences, Campos said.

In terms of payments, he said it is important for brands to provide flexibility by allowing consumers to pay using the method they want.

He said in the Philippines, consumers continue to strongly prefer cash-on-delivery payment.

“At Zalora, we have significantly expanded the available payment options. Major e-wallets have been integrated to allow consumers to access popular methods of payment like ShopeePay, GrabPay, Google Pay, PayPal and more,” he said.

Zalora has also teamed up with RCBC Bankard Services Corp., the credit card arm of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp., for the launch of a credit card that allows users to get rewards such as a six percent Zalora cashback every time they shop on the online fashion platform, and a two percent cashback for all online expenditures on other websites or apps.

In addition, Zalora credit card holders get one reward point for every P50 spent on all purchases, regardless of the platform, and the accumulated rewards can be used on products offered by the fashion shopping site.

To better understand and cater to customer preferences, Campos said brands will have to harness data and Zalora can help brands through its service Trender which can provide valuable data including geo segmentation, buying behavior, assortment and pricing.

He said Zalora also has other solutions to allow brands to scale up efforts to capture and engage online sellers such as the One Stock Solution covering end-to-end services including comprehensive warehousing and last-mile delivery, as well as E-Distribution which allows brands to utilize Zalora’s logistics and delivery capabilities even for products sold on other online marketplaces.

“Through models such as this, we are envisioning a process whereby all distribution services across Southeast Asia are fulfilled by Zalora, further cementing our name as the number one fashion and lifestyle specialist not just from a demand perspective, but also a supply-side perspective. This way, brands can focus their resources on product launches and customer relationship management, thereby creating a more fulfilling online shopping experience for consumers,” he said.