In the rapidly developing digital era, it is becoming easier for local micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) to develop. Starting from access to training, mentoring, product marketing to export solutions, it is increasingly open thanks to the presence of digital platforms.
Shopee is an e-commerce platform that continues to invest in facilitating the expansion of the local MSME market. This e-commerce, which is famous for its twin date campaign, continues to support local MSMEs through various programs that are presented consistently. For example, so that MSMEs can go global, there is a Shopee export program which was launched in 2019.
On the other hand, Shopee realizes that local MSMEs also need help to participate in the digital economy. Therefore, Shopee built Shoppee MSME Campuses spread across 10 cities including Solo, Bandung, Medan, Jakarta, Malang, Bali, Samarinda and Yogyakarta. Without hesitation, each campus offers free training as well as various sales support facilities such as photo studios and live streaming studios.
Shopee MSME Campus is a place for training and mentoring with free facilities that can be used by all MSMEs. It is not surprising that in the last two years, the number of MSMEs trained at the Shopee MSME Campus has doubled to tens of thousands of MSMEs. Tens of thousands of MSME products have also successfully entered the export market after being trained at the Shopee MSME Campus.
Last month, Shopee also launched a program entitled “Simultaneous Export Movement in 10 Cities”. This program aims to train 1000 local MSMEs to better understand online sales and how to export their products in a very simple way.
In addition, to ensure the ability to support the marketing of MSME products, Shopee has also inaugurated an export warehouse located in West Jakarta. The warehouse, which was also inaugurated by the Indonesian Minister of Trade, Zulkifli Hasan, is capable of handling tens of thousands of MSME products per day and will be sent to various countries in East Asia, Southeast Asia and Latin America.
So what are the prospects for online business after Shopee’s massive investment for MSMEs? The story of this young woman from Solo might be the answer. Monica Kumala, a 25 year old woman, has successfully traded online by opening the Monica The Label shop. Monica not only earns a turnover of hundreds of millions of rupiah from her business, she also sells her products abroad.
Monica’s story in business began when she was still in high school. At that time, this teenager who went to school in Surakarta was selling Muslim clothes and hijabs via his cellphone using the broadcast message method. In 2017, Monica shifted her business to selling contemporary food at that time, namely Bakso Aci. Unfortunately, after approximately two years of operation, Monica had to close her culinary business due to the impact of the pandemic.
“During the pandemic, I went all out, bro. Not only did my turnover decrease, I also lost money to the point that I could no longer pay the rent for the meatball shop until I finally closed it. “Incidentally, there was still some income left over from Bakso Aci, from there I started research and finally in July 2021 I made basic clothing products for women to be sold by Monica The Label on Shopee,” said Monica.
Monica The Label’s own products carry the concept of basic women’s clothing, which means they are not stuck to a momentary fashion trend, and can be worn almost at any time and occasion. Of course, the aim is to attract a wider market share.
“In the early days of selling clothes on Shopee, it wasn’t like there were orders every day. Even if there are orders, there aren’t many, at most 5 or 10. But I try to maximize various features on Shopee such as advertising, discounts, and also endorsement collaborations to get orders. “Alhamdulillah, starting in September 2021, my turnover continues to increase, the peak was during Eid this year, my turnover increased almost 3 times,” said Monica.
Not only has turnover increased, this 25 year old woman born in Magelang was also surprised when the clothes she produced turned out to have customers from a number of countries such as Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil.
“The first time I found out that my product could be sold overseas was in Malaysia. I really didn’t expect it because products from Solo can be sent to Malaysia. “I didn’t even think that the process was that easy, I didn’t need to take care of permits because it was all from 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 MSME businesses to the global market. Based on data quoted from Shopee, by 2023, 20 million local MSME products will have been sold abroad.
Apart from the government, support from private parties such as Shopee is able to enable MSME players to expand their market coverage and explore the world of international business with more confidence.