For those who don’t know, before founding fashion eCommerce site BerryBenka, Jason was one of the two co-founders of Disdus, a group-buying site which was aqquired by Groupon, now it’s Groupon Indonesia. Before that Jason studied in Purdue and Columbia in the US, then back to Indonesia to work for McKinsey. He is also a cofounder/advisor of Bilna – the baby product site founded by his Disdus co-founder Ferry Tenka (Bilna is now merged with Moxy from Thailand). Jason definitely has a career track that most entrepreneurs could only wish for.
More than three years ago, in the beginning time of 2013, I’ve catched up with Jason Lamuda in a round-table interview about eCommerce market in Indonesia. After that BerryBenka has secured more than $5M with series B funding from Gree Ventures and Transcosmos. Now I wanna meet up with the serial entrepreneur again to grab an update about his startup journey to share with e27’s readers when his startup has grown to have more than 150 employees.
Hi Jason, how is BerryBenka going on till date?
With revenue growth up to 250% per year, we are slowly gaining trust of many loyal online shoppers and emerged as one of the key players in the industry.
– 2015 marks our remarkable move with the expansion to menswear category, also the launch of Berrybenka first in-house label, Berrybenka the Label, along with exclusive celebrities collection in collaboration with Jessica Mila, Marsha Timothy and Raline Shah.
– We also launched our IOS and Android App for Berrybenka
How did you come up with Hijabenka?
Hijabenka was launched in June 2014, as an answer to our customer’s request for muslim wear.
Why didn’t you sell Muslim women fashion in one brand BerryBenka.com to focus resources?
Hijabenka has a separate website because we want to provide easy, friendly and comfortable shopping experiences to our customers who want to look for Muslim fashion and accessories, hence they don’t need to navigate through all products in Berrybenka website. In addition, having its own website would provide a stronger identity and brand awareness to the market.
What are the ways you do to acquire customers? And then keep them coming back? Any new trend or channels you see in a near future for customer acquisition?
We believe that customers are our greatest inspiration and the reason for everything we do. We always strive to bring an Easy, Fun and Reliable online shopping experience.
Our promise is to satisfy them with new arrivals and special offers every day, along with tons of benefits.
We are also expanding new channels through B2B partnership with affiliate programs also partnerships across industries with bank, telco operators, FMCGs, and others.
How about ratio of online payment methods and how are you improving them to serve customers better, due to the current condition of the infrastructure?
Most preferred payment methods are Bank transfer (55%), followed with COD (30%). We also provide several promotions with banks for credit card holders, also with special programs such as KlikBCA&KlikPay.
Also, we are now in process of developing new mobile payment methods and partnership with supermarket store.
About offline marketing channels, what your view and BerryBenka activities and their performance? Top five cities to focus (both on/offline)?
Offline marketing always be a significant element of our integrated marketing programs from time to time. Berrybenka always support various on-ground events, communities and activations which suitable with our target market.
This month, we will support Jakarta Fashion Week 2016 as the one and only fashion e-commerce which will officially support the event with online and offline activities during the most fashionable week in Indonesia. In conjuction with Cleo Fashion Awards 2015 (which is a part of JFW agenda) we will be collaborated with 3 young and rising designers to sell their collections exclusively in Berrybenka.com later this December.
We also have our signature event, The Click Market, an offline bazaar to introduce our merchants to customers directly. This year, it was held last month with more than 70 tenants in Trans Studio Mall, Bandung which attracts more than 40.000 visitors in 3 days.
Top five cities: Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Medan, Yogyakarta
For customer experience, how are you doing to make it better?
e are committed to bring “Greater Customer Experience” by always trying to reach our customers through various channels from hotline call, SMS, email, social media, and live chat. Besides that, we also offer various benefits such as:
- Free returns up to 30 days
- Free Shipping for purchase minimal and above IDR 300K (currently we are having special promo free shipping to all across Indonesia)
- Several payment options: bank transfer, credit card, e-banking, and Cash on Delivery (COD).
- Customer care is available from Monday to Friday (9.00 AM – 6.00 PM) and
Saturday to Sunday (8.00 AM – 5.00 PM) - Live chat service available from Monday to Sunday (9.00 AM – 6.00 PM)
- Daily newsletter with special promo for first time subscribers and customized emails for existing customers
- Multiple campaigns across platforms
How about the ratio of customers from outside of Jakarta, and out of Java? How to effectively handle delivery/return for these faraway cities
Almost half of our customers are in Jabodetabek area, 40% from Java non-Jabodetabek and 10% outside Java.
We continue to collaborate with several logistic partners as well as developing our in-house fleet, “Berrybenka Delivery” to effectively handle delivery and return throughout cities across Indonesia. T
How are you preparing for mobile commerce?
We are fully acknowledge the growing potential of mobile commerce for Berrybenka. From year to year, mobile commerce has growing exponentially in terms of traffic and transactions. Our product & technology team also continue to develop and maintain our mobile platforms with new features such as promo gathering page and express checkout in our mobile apps.
What is the percentage of traffic from mobile now? and is the sale revenue ratio from mobile also relevant with traffics or they still buy more on desktop?
Mobile are growing rapidly with more than half (approx. 60%) of our traffic coming from mobile web and mobile apps.
Along with this growth, customers are keener to do transactions on mobile, refer to our mobile transactions which grow over 30% in year to year (based on September 2015 data).
Any advices for startups to build up and grow sustainably from beginning to your current scale?
Invest in building a strong team right from the start.
The post is firstly appeared on e27