TV and online retailer Momo.com Inc (富邦媒體) on Thursday last week unveiled a logistics expansion plan to support sales and long-term development, including the construction of an automated warehouse in southern Taiwan to improve logistics capacity and order fulfillment.
“The new facility would help the company cope with popular shopping periods, such as Singles’ Day on Nov. 11, during which warehouses are overwhelmed with an influx of parcels as consumers respond to steep discounts on major e-commerce platforms, including ours,” Momo.com president Lin Chi-feng (林啟峰) told a news conference in Taipei.
“We are looking for land in Tainan to build a major addition to our logistics facilities, which include an automated warehouse in northern Taiwan, six warehouses and three satellite warehouses,” he said.
In addition, the company is working with Chunghwa Post Co (中華郵政) and several courier companies to cut delivery time for customers, Lin said, adding that early results from a pilot scooter fleet project are encouraging, with the average delivery time reduced by about two hours.
Regarding Taiwan’s fiercely competitive e-commerce market, Lin said that the company expects to remain dominant in the business-to-consumer (B2C) segment, thanks to its loyal user base which is comprised mostly of women.
“We have found some success in bridging the gap between online channels and department stores by introducing cosmetic brands such as Lancome,” Lin said.
Momo.com last month introduced the Muji brand at its online B2C shopping site Momoshop.com (Momo 購物網) and is adding cosmetics brands Shu Uemura and Biotherm this month in a bid to bolster online sales.
The company hopes to keep lower-margin consumer electronic products at no more than 40 percent of its product mix, Lin said.
In the first quarter of this year, sales contribution from consumer electronics rose to 37 percent from 34 percent a year earlier, he said.
Looking ahead, Lin said competition in the e-commerce market would only get tougher, and success would depend on operators’ information technology (IT) and logistics capabilities.
“Operators must have IT and data analytics to anticipate which areas will see a surge in demand, and the logistics to deliver the parcels to the customers’ doors,” he said.
Lin said he believes China’s JD.com Inc (京東) would eventually prevail over Alibaba Group Holding Ltd’s (阿里巴巴) Taobao.com (淘寶) in the battle for the world’s biggest and most rapidly evolving e-commerce market, due to JD.com’s quality product mix and superiority in last-mile delivery.
Momo.com’s net income fell 0.4 percent year-on-year to NT$307 million (US$10.26 million) in the first quarter, with earnings per share of NT$2.2.
In the first four months of this year, cumulative sales rose 32.3 percent annually to NT$13.28 billion.
The company has proposed to pay a cash dividend of NT$8 per share against last year’s earnings per share of NT$9.07.
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