From "1:1" to "1+1", Shopee creates a differentiated overseas expansion path for domestic brands

At the conference, Shopee’s brand investment team analyzed the brand environment in the Southeast Asian market, summarized and shared differentiated overseas expansion paths from the platform’s perspective.

With the entry of more influential brands , Shopee Mall continues to grow and innovate, creating every possibility for brands to go overseas.

Get rid of the "1:1" replica model, localization strategy helps brands expand into Southeast Asia

In the past few years, China's cross-border e-commerce has developed rapidly. From the early years when it focused on the traditional European and American markets, it has gradually shown a trend of rising in multiple areas.

The Southeast Asian market where Shopee is located has become a "new home ground" for domestic brands to test the waters in cross-border business due to its geographical proximity, cultural similarities, and a young population of over 600 million.

As a leading e-commerce platform in Southeast Asia , Shopee , which is well aware of the characteristics of the local market , has discovered that many Chinese brands still view going overseas as a simple "1:1" store replication, copying domestic strategies to new markets, always "standing still", and finding it difficult to truly penetrate the local consumer groups.

Shopee believes that brands need to transform from a "1:1" model to a "1+1" model of "brand power + localization", integrating their own brand characteristics with the characteristics of the target market, establishing influence among local consumer groups and generating brand value.

With its long-standing localization advantages, Shopee Cross-border has summarized differentiated overseas expansion paths based on the brand's own genes, helping brands to identify their core advantages in Southeast Asia, effectively attract potential consumers, improve retention rates, and continuously optimize online marketing and product promotion capabilities. At the Brand Sellers Investment Conference, the Shopee brand team shared two cases:

1. Zisese: "New consumer brands + new consumer groups", Chinese beauty brands gain popularity in Southeast Asia

As a new domestic beauty brand that has been extremely popular in recent years, Zisese is very sensitive to the emerging consumer demands of young groups. Considering the characteristics of Southeast Asia, where more than 50% of the population is under 30 years old and the market has the deepest "internet touch" in the world, Shopee has set "traffic" as the keyword for Zisese's overseas expansion.

In order to help Zisese increase user touchpoints and build new local links, Shopee integrated internal and external channels to conduct traffic testing and delivery: on the internal part, through Shopee's Internet celebrity marketing service (SKS), local beauty KOLs were used to live broadcast products to accurately convey brand value to consumers and increase the store's voice; on the external part, based on the platform's internal data, Zisese was helped to establish a store product catalog, and CPAS (Facebook & Instagram Alliance Advertising) and Google Ads were used for precise and targeted delivery, so as to achieve off-site traffic diversion and brand building simultaneously, and promote Zisese to complete the online marketing upgrade in the Southeast Asian market.

During the 11.11 promotion in 2020, ZISURE, which had just entered Southeast Asia, won the second place in the list of best-selling cosmetics brands in the Taiwan market. It successfully attracted Southeast Asian consumers in the first round of promotional traffic dividends after the epidemic and gained its first batch of loyal audiences.

2. TOPK: "Core product strength + platform scale", domestic 3C brands compete for market share in Southeast Asia

TOPK, a domestic cross-border 3C brand, is a veteran player in the overseas market with rich experience and a mature team. It has been polished in the European and American markets and has strong product research and development capabilities.

Faced with Southeast Asia's fragmented terrain and diverse geographical environment, Shopee suggested that TOPK make good use of the platform's scale advantages in logistics, improve its fulfillment capabilities through overseas warehouses, and combine its strong products to establish a high-quality and reliable online shopping experience for local consumers.

After opening overseas warehouses on the entire Shopee site, TOPK has achieved the goal of delivering products within 2 days. With the help of the platform's logistics infrastructure, TOPK has not only successfully reduced transportation costs, but also significantly increased customer praise rates, allowing the quick and convenient shopping experience to penetrate into the hearts of consumers. At the same time, it has saved team resources, allowing them to have enough energy to invest in scientific research and develop a series of new products for the Southeast Asian market with bright colors and cool shapes that suit the preferences of local people.

Relying on the traffic from the big promotion, TOPK launched new products during the Shopee 9.9 Super Shopping Festival in 2020, driving an 18-fold increase in orders for stores across the entire site, and successfully entered the hot-selling brand list in six major markets.

Shopee creates a differentiated overseas expansion path for domestic brands

In addition to the above-mentioned brands, Shopee Cross-border also provides a series of exclusive optimization and support services for many well-known domestic brands including Xiaomi and Konka, using the "1+1" model of "brand power + localization" to help achieve a double explosion in volume and sales.

Based on brand "inclusiveness", the world's top brands have entered Southeast Asia

The global epidemic broke out in 2020, and cross-border e-commerce has become increasingly geographically differentiated. Many of the world's top brands have also turned to more inclusive markets.

In this context, Shopee has attracted a number of top global brands to settle in by relying on the stability of the Southeast Asian market and its enthusiasm for digital transformation, further accelerating local consumers' acceptance of brands.

Amore Pacific Group and Shopee Sign Strategic Cooperation Agreement

In December 2020, Shopee collaborated with the world-renowned cosmetics brand PONDS to launch the AI ​​"beauty consultant" Skin Advisor Live (SAL) for Shopee users in the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Equipped with artificial intelligence, SAL can provide free online customized skin care analysis based on the skin characteristics of consumers, helping consumers to choose more satisfactory products, and conveying the concept of finding their own way to beauty to Southeast Asian consumers.

In February 2021, Amorepacific Group signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Shopee to enrich the supply of beauty products in Southeast Asia and meet the urgent needs of local consumers for different types of beauty and skin care products, thereby expanding the group's brand influence in Southeast Asia.

At the same time, Shopee Mall has also become a new battlefield for many brands to seize the Southeast Asian consumer market: platform data shows that since its launch in 2017, Shopee Mall has more than 20,000 brands from all over the world, and the overall order volume has increased by 10 times. In 2020 alone, the number of official stores in Shopee Mall has doubled. International brands including Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, Haier, Gree, DJI, P&G, Unilever, L'Oreal, Disney and others have successfully settled in the mall.

In the future, Shopee will also launch a series of upgrade initiatives for Shopee Mall, including Shopee Premium, Shopee Mart, brand membership programs, etc., to provide brands with more channels to communicate with consumers and help them reach more diverse consumer groups in Southeast Asia. It will drive brand development in the region by leading the e-commerce platform and realize every possibility of going overseas.

Shopee Platform

Cross-border e-commerce market

Southeast Asia