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E-commerce in South-East Asia
東南亞電商
Home-field advantage
本土優勢
The global online-shopping giants may not find it easy to conquer the region
全球的電商巨人可能都難以征服這一地區
TROPICAL rain pounds on the roof of a cavernous warehouse near Jakarta, Indonesia's capital. Inside, youngsters in orange T-shirts haul around clothes, luggage and electrical goods for Lazada, an e-commerce firm, which has just moved in. The 12,000 square metre space is three times the size of the depot it has vacated, but it already looks full. Three years ago Lazada's entire stock filled a storeroom the size of a studio flat, recalls Magnus Ekbom, its twenty-something boss in Indonesia.
在印尼首都雅加達，熱帶大雨滂沱之下，密布著洞穴一樣的倉庫。印尼電商Lazada剛剛進駐于此，來來往往的年輕人穿著橙色T恤，運輸著衣服，箱子以及電子產品。這片區域占地12000平方米，是Lazada舊倉庫的三倍，但如今看上去也滿了。二十多歲的印尼老板Magnus Ekborn回憶說，三年前，Lazada的全部庫存也不過是個小單間大小。
Internet shopping accounts for less than 1% of all purchases in South-East Asia—a region twice as populous as America, where the proportion is nearly 10%. But surging smartphone use and a broadening middle class mean the market is set to multiply; perhaps fivefold by 2018, reckons Frost & Sullivan, a consulting firm. Since it launched in 2012 Lazada has laid claim to six South-East Asian countries, largely unchallenged by e-commerce giants such as Amazon of the United States, Alibaba of China and Rakuten of Japan. It may soon have to fight them for its territory.
在線購物占據了東南亞全部消費的不到1%，而該地區的人口是美國的兩倍，后者的在線購物占比接近10%。但是智能手機的廣泛使用，以及日益增長的中產階級意味著這個市場必將擴大；咨詢公司Frost&Sullivan判斷，截止到2018年市場將擴大到五倍。自Lazada2012年成立以來，其宣稱將進軍6個東南亞國家，而且基本并未受到其他電商巨人的挑戰，比如美國亞馬遜，中國阿里巴巴以及日本樂天。可能Lazada很快就要同上述各家競爭，以捍衛自己的市場份額。
Lazada was created by Rocket Internet, a Berlin-based investor and incubator that cranks out startups designed to dominate emerging markets. Rocket still holds a 24% stake, though Lazada has now raised more than $600m from investors including Tesco, a British grocer, and Temasek, a Singaporean sovereign-wealth fund. These deals appear to value it at about $1.3 billion, which could well make it South-East Asia's dearest technology firm.
Lazada是由總部位于柏林的投資和孵化公司Rocket Internet創立的。該公司扶持創業公司以主宰新興市場。盡管Lazada已經從諸如英國零售企業樂購，新加坡主權基金淡馬錫等機構募集到了6億多美元，Rocket仍然持有其24%的股份。這些交易似乎將Lazada估值為13億美元，可能是東南亞最貴的科技公司了。
Like other Rocket companies, Lazada is run by a gaggle of young European expatriates, plucked from finance and consulting. It seems ready to stomach years of losses. In the first half of 2014—the only recent period for which results are available—it lost $50m before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, on revenues of $60m.
同其他Rocket旗下的公司一樣，Lazada是由一群年輕的歐洲僑民運作的，把持了財務和咨詢。Rocket已經準備好承擔連續多年虧損。在2014年上半年——也是近期唯一可以得到的數據——Lazada在不計利息，稅收，折舊以及分攤等開銷的情況下損失了5000萬美元，其總收入只有6000萬美元。
Again like other Rocket companies, its critics say it is just a copycat, in this case a mere clone of Amazon. Lazada's bosses say such charges underestimate the sophistication and gumption required to succeed in places such as Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Online marketing is trickier there than in America or Europe, because locals use a much wider variety of search and social-media sites. The region's diversity means constant tweaking of online portals to suit local languages and cultures. It also means battling a hotch-potch of customs rules.
也和其他Rocket旗下的公司一樣，批評者說他就是簡單復制品，不過這次抄了亞馬遜而已。Lazada的老板們則認為這種評論低估了想在泰國、印尼、菲律賓和越南成功的復雜性和進取心。在線市場在這里比在歐美更棘手，因為當地人使用更為廣泛的搜索和社交站點。地區多樣性意味著要不斷調整網上門戶以適應當地語言和文化。同樣也需要大雜燴一般的海關規定。
By far the biggest challenges are payment and delivery. Fewer than one in ten South-East Asians has a credit card, and those that do have them tend not to use them online, for fear of fraud. So a big chunk of Lazada's customers prefer to pay in cash when their goods arrive, which requires more sophistication from delivery partners. Postal services are often sluggish and unreliable—especially in the vast archipelagos of Indonesia and the Philippines—and local logistics firms are still unused to handling high volumes of small packages. About a third of Lazada's orders are delivered by its own fleet of vans and motorbikes, which now serve more than 80 South-East Asian cities.
目前最大的挑戰是支付和遞送。東南亞人持有信用卡的比例不到十分之一，而持有信用卡的人又不傾向于在線使用，以防詐騙。因此許多Lazada的客戶更青睞貨到付款，也對運送伙伴的提出了更復雜的要求。郵政服務一般都很遲緩，而且不可靠——尤其是在印尼和菲律賓的廣闊群島上——而當地物流公司仍舊不習慣處理大量小體積貨物。Lazada約有三分之一的訂單是由其自有的車隊完成，用貨車和摩托車服務80多個東南亞城市。
Lazada's rapid growth has started to rouse competitors, including the big conglomerates whose shopping centres dominate the region's retail markets. On February 25th Lippo Group launched MatahariMall, a new e-commerce venture, in partnership with the Matahari chain of department stores, in which Lippo owns a stake and which are anchor tenants of some of Lippo's shopping centres.
Lazada的快速發展引來了競爭對手，包括那些主宰了當地零售市場的購物中心所屬的大型企業。2月25日，力寶集團和Matahari連鎖百貨公司成立了Matahari商城作為其在線試水之作。力寶持有Matahari連鎖百貨的股份，而后者則是力寶的購物中心忠實租戶。
Messaging services and web portals are turning to e-commerce to boost their profits. In February, Line, a popular messaging app owned by Naver of South Korea, started selling groceries in Thailand. Last October Softbank, a Japanese internet and telecoms conglomerate, and Sequoia Capital, an American investor, put $100m into Tokopedia, a sort of Indonesian eBay.
信息服務和門戶網站也正在轉型電商以擴展利潤。2月，韓國Naver旗下的流行信息應用連我開始在泰國進行零售。去年十月，日本網絡和電信集團軟銀以及美國投資公司紅杉資本向印尼版的“淘寶”Tokopedia注資一億美金。
But the most serious threat to Lazada comes from the overseas e-commerce giants. After Lazada was set up, Indonesia passed a law banning further foreign investment in e-commerce firms which hold their own inventory (Tokopedia does not)—but politicians have recently talked of repealing it. Amazon has begun offering free delivery to big-spending South-East Asian shoppers who don't mind waiting for wares shipped from America. Last month Alibaba opened an Indonesian outpost of Aliexpress, which helps shoppers import goods from Chinese manufacturers. In May it took a 10% stake in Singpost, Singapore's state postal service—perhaps in preparation for a more vigorous assault.
但對Lazada最嚴重的威脅還是來自海外電商巨頭。Lazada成立后，印尼通過了法律禁止境外資本投資自有庫存的電商公司（Tokopedia不是）——但是政客們近期開始討論解除禁令。亞馬遜已經開始向大額消費的東南亞顧客提供免費送貨服務，只要他們不介意等待貨物從美國運來。上個月阿里巴巴開設了在印尼的前哨，全球速賣通，幫助顧客從中國廠商進口商品。五月，阿里收購新加坡國有郵政服務新加坡郵政的10%的股份——可能就是為了準備更積極的進攻。
Max Bittner, Lazada's overall boss, thinks it would take time for these firms to replicate his firm's local knowledge and delivery networks. One of his priorities is to expand relationships with suppliers and manufacturers in China, the better to compete with the bottomless catalogue of cheap products which Alibaba, in particular, could bring to the region. South-East Asia may still prove big and diverse enough for several large e-retailers to co-exist—but investors will spill a lot of red ink finding out, thinks Paul Srivorakul of aCommerce, which processes online orders for consumer brands and retailers. “It could be a bloodbath,” he says.
Lazada總經理Max Bittner認為，這些公司想要復制Lazada當地的知名度和運輸網需要時間。他目前的重點之一是擴展同中國供應商和制造商的關系，以更好地同廉價產品，特別是阿里巴巴可能引入這個地區的，來競爭。東南亞市場很大，也很多樣化，可能足以讓幾家電子零售商共存，但是電子商務的Paul Srivorakul認為，投資商會不遺余力地爭奪在線訂單，樹立客戶品牌和零售商口碑。他說“可能會打得頭破血流”。翻譯：趙興昊 校對：李燊
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