TV and online retailer Momo.com Inc (富邦媒體) is preparing to upgrade its delivery service as the company continues to shorten its supply chain.
By June this year, customers in the greater Taipei area could receive their orders within three hours, Momo chairman and president Lin Chi-feng (林啟峰) told a media gathering in Taipei yesterday.
The new service is made possible by the continuous expansion of the company’s logistics capability, Lin said, adding that the number of satellite warehouses would rise from four to 10 by the end of this year.
“Early testing has shown good results, with some packages arriving within 30 minutes, to the surprise of our customers, if the address is near one of our satellite warehouses,” Lin said.
With its new speedy delivery service, the company has the ability to infiltrate a market currently controlled by convenience stores.
“Momo is testing product mixes to fill urgent needs, such as delivering tampons and condoms,” Lin said.
The company is also exploring fresh produce as an option, he added.
However, Lin gave a reserved outlook for the e-commerce sector this year due to weakening economic growth and slack domestic consumption.
Still, he expects less-heated competition in the consumer-to-consumer e-commerce market as rival platforms are likely to refrain from using costly subsidies to attract users.
“Everybody is running out of money and seeing thinner margins as they drive for topline growth,” Lin said.
Momo.com, which focuses on business-to-consumer online and TV shopping, fuels most of its growth by attracting brick-and-mortar shoppers, Lin said.
Meanwhile, the boundaries between TV and online shopping are rapidly blurring as live streaming becomes more common, he said.
While TV shopping growth has been slowing, the company said it is working on adapting the infomercial format to live streaming on its mobile app.
The automated logistic centers and ongoing construction of satellite warehouses would boost operational efficiency, while the addition of popular international brands to the online store portal and deepening cooperation with such brands would help the company sustain online sales growth, SinoPac Securities Investment Service Corp (永豐投顧) said in a note last month.
Momo.com reported that revenue last year rose 26.4 percent annually to NT$42.02 billion (US$1.36 billion), a new record since the company’s founding in 2004.
The revenue contributions from online shopping rose 33.2 percent annually from a year earlier, while TV rose 2 percent, company data showed.
This year, the company is shooting for revenue growth of more than 20 percent year-on-year, Lin said.
CAUTIOUS RECOVERY: While the manufacturing sector returned to growth amid the US-China trade truce, firms remain wary as uncertainty clouds the outlook, the CIER said The local manufacturing sector returned to expansion last month, as the official purchasing managers’ index (PMI) rose 2.1 points to 51.0, driven by a temporary easing in US-China trade tensions, the Chung-Hua Institution for Economic Research (CIER, 中華經濟研究院) said yesterday. The PMI gauges the health of the manufacturing industry, with readings above 50 indicating expansion and those below 50 signaling contraction. “Firms are not as pessimistic as they were in April, but they remain far from optimistic,” CIER president Lien Hsien-ming (連賢明) said at a news conference. The full impact of US tariff decisions is unlikely to become clear until later this month
Popular vape brands such as Geek Bar might get more expensive in the US — if you can find them at all. Shipments of vapes from China to the US ground to a near halt last month from a year ago, official data showed, hit by US President Donald Trump’s tariffs and a crackdown on unauthorized e-cigarettes in the world’s biggest market for smoking alternatives. That includes Geek Bar, a brand of flavored vapes that is not authorized to sell in the US, but which had been widely available due to porous import controls. One retailer, who asked not to be named, because
CHIP DUTIES: TSMC said it voiced its concerns to Washington about tariffs, telling the US commerce department that it wants ‘fair treatment’ to protect its competitiveness Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) yesterday reiterated robust business prospects for this year as strong artificial intelligence (AI) chip demand from Nvidia Corp and other customers would absorb the impacts of US tariffs. “The impact of tariffs would be indirect, as the custom tax is the importers’ responsibility, not the exporters,” TSMC chairman and chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) said at the chipmaker’s annual shareholders’ meeting in Hsinchu City. TSMC’s business could be affected if people become reluctant to buy electronics due to inflated prices, Wei said. In addition, the chipmaker has voiced its concern to the US Department of Commerce
STILL LOADED: Last year’s richest person, Quanta Computer Inc chairman Barry Lam, dropped to second place despite an 8 percent increase in his wealth to US$12.6 billion Staff writer, with CNA Daniel Tsai (蔡明忠) and Richard Tsai (蔡明興), the brothers who run Fubon Group (富邦集團), topped the Forbes list of Taiwan’s 50 richest people this year, released on Wednesday in New York. The magazine said that a stronger New Taiwan dollar pushed the combined wealth of Taiwan’s 50 richest people up 13 percent, from US$174 billion to US$197 billion, with 36 of the people on the list seeing their wealth increase. That came as Taiwan’s economy grew 4.6 percent last year, its fastest pace in three years, driven by the strong performance of the semiconductor industry, the magazine said. The Tsai
RSS