Quality Alchemist (品質煉金術師): HKSTP & Alibaba B2B Export e-Commerce Business Seminar

Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks Corporation (HKSTP) and Alibaba Hong Kong co-organized a seminar named “B2B Export E-commerce Business Tips and Successful Case Sharing” on 29 Jan 2015 in Science Park. As e-Commerce platforms increasingly increasingly mature, SMEs with limited resources can make use of the low-cost but highly effective platforms for developing their businesses. The seminar aimed to introduce the latest business trend of B2B e-Commerce and the best economic useful operational tips to technology companies in Science Park. The summary was showed below for sharing. Before the seminar, we took a group photo for memory.

(Left: Mr. Antony Kwong (Assistant Mgr, Marketing, HKSTP), Mr. Terry Kwok (Senior Account Manager, Alibaba.com), Mr. Jeffrey Lam (Vice-President, Hong Kong Netrepreneurs Association) and I)

In the beginning, Mr. Terry Kwok (Senior Account Manager) requested all participants standup and asked who contacted or used B2B or B2C platforms. Then only few participants had experience on those platforms.

Terry changed the presentation style to invite Mr. Jeffrey Lam (General Manager, EPR International Co. Ltd.) as interviewee for sharing his experience. Jeffrey had established his company in United Kingdom (Loughborough) since 2004. It started selling product via online platform. But he used Alibaba for advertisement in 2006 because of free. Then, he found the method to improve this online tools and won Alibaba Gold Supplier since 2007.

Then Terry asked Jeffrey to share his experience on six online platforms. Jeffrey said eBay had steady publicity and most USA local users for B2C. But eBay’s rule and regulation were tightly and higher charge, moreover, you had better have oversea warehouse. DHgate.com was also high publicity but it changed from B2B to B2C. It was observed the sale was going down but Jeffrey still used. Since it charged per transaction, no transaction mean free. The global sources, Made-in-China.com and Aliababa.com were B2B platform. However, Jeffrey said Alibaba had a function to link all his companies into one platform and got the synergy effect.

Some participants asked how to manage so many platforms. Jeffrey said 2 companies per platform and No sales were employed but platform operators/analyst were employed to handle the order form the platform. Moreover, he shared that social media was then employed for local market (HK – B2C). Because social media (e.g. facebook) used to promote and advertise that was the easier way to spread out the word and best way for user to share their buying experience and also for them to ‘show off’. Then Jerry shared his company pages in Alibaba platform and we found some interested items such as their team’s cute style photos.

Some key points on e-commerce were shared as followings:
- Sell photo not the product (e.g. special photo frame)
- Product description
- Platform look (comfortable and reliable)
For Platform look, Jeffrey said most people looked it from top to the bottom.
Then Jeffrey summarized rules for using online B2B platform as below:
1. The most important item posted first.
2. Differentiation
3. Cross-link
4. Photo-frame

Terry added that there were four phase using Alibaba platform.
Phase 1 – Exposure (Jeffrey case had 600,000 per month)
Phase 2 – Click (It had 3000 to 6000 click per month (~5-10%)
Phase 3 – Enquiry (About 300 enquiry per month)
Phase 4 – Order (It depends on staff. If Jeffrey took the enquiry, it could be upto 95%!)
Jeffrey also give use a tip that the last statement of your reply should be “?” mark, so customer return rate would be increased.

At the end, Terry shared Alibaba e-commerce business tips again. He briefed Alibaba services including Taobao.com (淘寶網), Tmall.com (天貓), Juhuasuan.com (聚划算), Aliexpress (全球速賣通), Alibaba.com (阿里巴巴) and 1688.com (1688).

Then he asked if you want to exposure your product to the world, Alibaba’s multi-language function could help. How do you know your business success in the platform? The data analysis could help to analysis and trace buyers’ behaviors. Moreover, you could find buyer proactively through buyer order platform.

Finally, I presented souvenir to Mr. Terry Kwok and Mr. Jeffrey Lam.

I met Mr. Albert K.P. Leung (Business Development Manager) from Hong Kong Cosmetic Technical Resources Centre which was jointly founded by CMA Testing and Certification Laboratories (CMA Testing) and International Cosmetics (Asia Pacific) Joint Development Centre. We took a photo for memory.