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E-commerce in South-East Asia
东南亚电商
Home-field advantage
本土优势
The global online-shopping giants may not find it easy to conquer the region
全球的电商巨人可能都难以征服这一地区
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.
在印尼首都雅加达，热带大雨滂沱之下，密布着洞穴一样的仓库。印尼电商Lazada刚刚进驻于此，来来往往的年轻人穿着橙色T恤，运输着衣服，箱子以及电子产品。这片区域占地12000平方米，是Lazada旧仓库的三倍，但如今看上去也满了。二十多岁的印尼老板Magnus Ekborn回忆说，三年前，Lazada的全部库存也不过是个小单间大小。
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.
在线购物占据了东南亚全部消费的不到1%，而该地区的人口是美国的两倍，后者的在线购物占比接近10%。但是智能手机的广泛使用，以及日益增长的中产阶级意味着这个市场必将扩大；咨询公司Frost&Sullivan判断，截止到2018年市场将扩大到五倍。自Lazada2012年成立以来，其宣称将进军6个东南亚国家，而且基本并未受到其他电商巨人的挑战，比如美国亚马逊，中国阿里巴巴以及日本乐天。可能Lazada很快就要同上述各家竞争，以捍卫自己的市场份额。
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是由总部位于柏林的投资和孵化公司Rocket Internet创立的。该公司扶持创业公司以主宰新兴市场。尽管Lazada已经从诸如英国零售企业乐购，新加坡主权基金淡马锡等机构募集到了6亿多美元，Rocket仍然持有其24%的股份。这些交易似乎将Lazada估值为13亿美元，可能是东南亚最贵的科技公司了。
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旗下的公司一样，Lazada是由一群年轻的欧洲侨民运作的，把持了财务和咨询。Rocket已经准备好承担连续多年亏损。在2014年上半年——也是近期唯一可以得到的数据——Lazada在不计利息，税收，折旧以及分摊等开销的情况下损失了5000万美元，其总收入只有6000万美元。
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旗下的公司一样，批评者说他就是简单复制品，不过这次抄了亚马逊而已。Lazada的老板们则认为这种评论低估了想在泰国、印尼、菲律宾和越南成功的复杂性和进取心。在线市场在这里比在欧美更棘手，因为当地人使用更为广泛的搜索和社交站点。地区多样性意味着要不断调整网上门户以适应当地语言和文化。同样也需要大杂烩一般的海关规定。
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.
目前最大的挑战是支付和递送。东南亚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倾向于在线使用，以防诈骗。因此许多Lazada的客户更青睐货到付款，也对运送伙伴的提出了更复杂的要求。邮政服务一般都很迟缓，而且不可靠——尤其是在印尼和菲律宾的广阔群岛上——而当地物流公司仍旧不习惯处理大量小体积货物。Lazada约有三分之一的订单是由其自有的车队完成，用货车和摩托车服务80多个东南亚城市。
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的快速发展引来了竞争对手，包括那些主宰了当地零售市场的购物中心所属的大型企业。2月25日，力宝集团和Matahari连锁百货公司成立了Matahari商城作为其在线试水之作。力宝持有Matahari连锁百货的股份，而后者则是力宝的购物中心忠实租户。
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.
信息服务和门户网站也正在转型电商以扩展利润。2月，韩国Naver旗下的流行信息应用连我开始在泰国进行零售。去年十月，日本网络和电信集团软银以及美国投资公司红杉资本向印尼版的“淘宝”Tokopedia注资一亿美金。
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.
但对Lazada最严重的威胁还是来自海外电商巨头。Lazada成立后，印尼通过了法律禁止境外资本投资自有库存的电商公司（Tokopedia不是）——但是政客们近期开始讨论解除禁令。亚马逊已经开始向大额消费的东南亚顾客提供免费送货服务，只要他们不介意等待货物从美国运来。上个月阿里巴巴开设了在印尼的前哨，全球速卖通，帮助顾客从中国厂商进口商品。五月，阿里收购新加坡国有邮政服务新加坡邮政的10%的股份——可能就是为了准备更积极的进攻。
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总经理Max Bittner认为，这些公司想要复制Lazada当地的知名度和运输网需要时间。他目前的重点之一是扩展同中国供应商和制造商的关系，以更好地同廉价产品，特别是阿里巴巴可能引入这个地区的，来竞争。东南亚市场很大，也很多样化，可能足以让几家电子零售商共存，但是电子商务的Paul Srivorakul认为，投资商会不遗余力地争夺在线订单，树立客户品牌和零售商口碑。他说“可能会打得头破血流”。翻译：赵兴昊 校对：李燊
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