Various Solutions from Shopee for Local SMEs to Make Local Businesses Go Global

Kapanlagi.com - Micro, Small, and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) are increasingly facilitated to advance in the rapidly developing digital era. Starting from access to training, mentoring, product marketing, to solutions for export, all are becoming more accessible thanks to the presence of digital platforms.

One of the e-commerce platforms that continues to invest in facilitating market expansion for local SMEs is Shopee. This e-commerce platform, famous for its twin date campaign, consistently helps local SMEs through various programs.

For example, to make SMEs go global, there is the Shopee Export Program initiated since 2019. On the other hand, Shopee realizes that local SMEs also need assistance to enter the digital economy, so Shopee has established the Shopee SME Campus. What is it like?

Shopee SME Campus Spread Across 10 Cities

The Shopee SME Campus is spread across 10 cities, including Solo, Bandung, Medan, Jakarta, Malang, Bali, Samarinda, and Yogyakarta. Not only that, each campus provides free training and various supporting facilities for sales, such as photo studios and live streaming studios.

The Shopee SME Campus serves as a place for training and mentoring with free facilities that can be used by every SME. It is no wonder that in the past 2 years, the number of trained SMEs at the Shopee SME Campus has doubled, reaching tens of thousands of SMEs. Tens of thousands of SME products have also successfully penetrated the export market after participating in training at this campus.

Last month, Shopee also initiated a program called "Simultaneous Export Movement in 10 Cities". This program aims to train 1000 local MSMEs to understand the ins and outs of online sales and how they can easily export their products.

Inaugurate Export Warehouse

In addition, to ensure its capacity in assisting the marketing of MSME products, Shopee also inaugurated an Export Warehouse located in West Jakarta. The warehouse, which was also inaugurated by the Minister of Trade of the Republic of Indonesia, Zulkifli Hasan, is able to process tens of thousands of MSME products every day to be sent to various countries in East Asia, Southeast Asia, and Latin America.

So, what is the prospect of online business after the massive investment made by Shopee for MSMEs? The story of this young woman from Solo may be the answer.

A Success Story in Treading the Online Business Path

Monica Kumala, a 25-year-old woman, has successfully ventured into the online business by opening Monica The Label store. Not only has she earned hundreds of millions of rupiah in revenue from her business, but Monica has also successfully sold her products abroad.

Monica's business journey began when she was still in high school. At that time, this teenager, who was studying in Surakarta, sold Muslim clothing and hijabs through her mobile phone using the broadcast message method.

In 2017, Monica shifted her business by selling trendy food at that time, which was Bakso Aci. Unfortunately, after operating for about two years, Monica had to close her culinary business due to the impact of the pandemic.

"During the pandemic, I spent all my money. Not only did my revenue decrease, but I also suffered losses to the point where I could no longer pay the rent for the meatball stall until I eventually closed it." Coincidentally, there is still some income left from the aci meatballs, from there I started researching and finally in July 2021 I created basic women's clothing products for selling Monica The Label on Shopee," said Monica.

Embracing the Concept of Basic Women's Clothing

Monica The Label's products themselves embrace the concept of basic women's clothing, which means they are not bound by a fleeting fashion trend, and can be used almost anytime and anywhere. Of course, the goal is to attract a wider market share.

"Back when I first started selling clothes on Shopee, there weren't orders every day. Even if there were orders, they weren't many, maybe around 5 or 10. But I tried to maximize various features on Shopee like advertisements, discounts, and also endorsement collaborations to get orders. Alhamdulillah, starting from September 2021, my revenue has been increasing continuously, and the peak was during this year's Eid, my revenue increased almost threefold," said Monica.

Not only did the revenue increase, this 25-year-old woman from Magelang was also surprised when the clothes she produced had already gained customers from several countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and Brazil.

"I was first surprised to know that my products could be sold overseas in Malaysia. I never expected it because products from Solo could be shipped to Malaysia. I didn't even expect that the process would be that easy, I don't need to handle permits because everything is handled by Shopee," said Monica.

In this increasingly connected world, a series of investments made by Shopee certainly play an important role in developing the expansion of local MSMEs into the global market. Based on data quoted from Shopee, up to 2023, there have been 20 million local MSME products sold abroad.

In the end, to enable MSME actors to expand their market coverage and explore the international business world with more confidence, support from the government and private parties such as Shopee is needed.

(kly/tmi)