Thailand first Asian market for Taiwan’s E-Commerce firm
TAIWAN-BASED PC Home Online, which sees the C2C (consumer-to-consumer) e-commerce platform as having high potential across Southeast Asia, has reaffirmed Thailand as its first operational market in the region for C2C business.
PC Home Online, a large e-commerce operator, in fact established a subsidiary – PC Home Thailand – via the joint-venture model with Cal-Comp Electronics (Thailand) early last year.
The Thai unit yesterday revealed plans to penetrate the local e-commerce market, initially focusing on C2C e-commerce aimed at encouraging individuals and small businesses to benefit from PC Home’s platform, www.pchome.ac.th.
The e-commerce platform is set to be a comprehensive website offering C2C e-commerce for individual users for selling unique and varied products; B2C (business-to-consumer) for brands selling general products; and B2B2C (business-to-business-to-consumer) for small and medium-sized enterprises. Its C2C e-commerce offers a comprehensive website designed to offer 12 main product categories, with over 1,000 sub-categories as well as the provision of 300,000 Taiwanese products.
Jason Huang, director of PC Home Thailand, said the company would bring its successful model from Taiwan to develop the C2C, B2B and B2B2C segments, but providing C2C service first.
Huang said the company regarded Thailand as a high-potential market for e-commerce business, with the country’s overall online retail sector recording healthy growth of 30 per cent last year with a total value of Bt46 billion.
The market is expected to reach Bt58 billion this year.
E-commerce is, however, less than 1 per cent of the Kingdom’s retail business, as many Thais are still reticent about online transactions, while logistics and payment services need to be developed further to fulfil market needs, he said.
“Our mission is to build a better e-commerce ecosystem in Thailand. We want to help the economy become more active by promoting SMEs to sell their products online, free of charge, to achieve their full potential in terms of customers,” he added.
The company will officially launch full service this year after conducting a soft launch and trial of its C2C platform for a year, Huang said, while declining to disclose the target number of sellers and buyers as well as transaction and gross merchant value (GMV) for the Thai market.
Meanwhile, in Taiwan, PC Home Online has more than 100 million product items with a GMV of over 143 million New Taiwan Dollars (Bt155 million).
The main Taiwanese operation has over 1 million sellers and more than 8.8 million users, with its revenue stream coming from advertising and transaction fees.
“Asia as a whole is a market with great potential for C2C e-commerce, which is our strength. We have already stepped into the US and Japan, and Thailand is the first country for us in Southeast Asia,” the director said.
In Thailand, there are currently over 5 million stock-keeping units (SKUs) for C2C e-commerce, but it is expected that the number will eventually be much greater than the 100 SKUs in Taiwan, as Thailand’s population is three times bigger, he explained.
The top three bestselling products on PC Home Online are fashion, cosmetics and accessories.
Meanwhile, apart from PC Home Online, there is another Taiwanese-Thai joint venture, called TVD Shopping.
Established by TV Direct and Taiwan-based MoMo.com Inc, the company offers 24-hour home shopping via a TV channel and online shopping via www.tvdmomo.com.
Thanabul Maturanont, managing director of TVD Shopping, said TVD achieved revenue of Bt1 billion last year, with growth of 10 per cent targeted for 2016.
The company’s core business is to offer home shopping and online shopping service via multi-channels, including television, PC and mobile application.
