A support centre for online vendors is currently being proposed by Darussalam Enterprise (DARe), in response to the growing number of online businesses in Brunei and to provide them with a centralised location for pickup and delivery as well as value-added services like warehousing.

The Online Vendors Support Centre was mentioned in a presentation by Dayang Diana binti Haji Ramli from DARe during a recent a dialogue between DARe and members of the local business community last Tuesday.

After an earlier session prior to Tuesday's, "We realised that there is an opportunity especially for online vendors, so we want to propose this Online Vendors Support Centre. It's still a proposal, so we want to invite you to give us your feedback and suggestions," she shared in the presentation.

Under the proposal, she explained, the Support Centre would be located at the ISM (Industrial-Site Management) Beribi Office. The objective of the centre is to provide a centralised location where vendors can send their goods for pickup and delivery.

As highlighted in the presentation, the proposed centre is to consolidate the demand of online vendors. This requires reaching out to vendors and encouraging them to sign up for DARe support. It then involves negotiating with consolidated demand for logistics providers such as the Postal Services (EMS) and private couriers such as DHL, TNT and more. Pickup and delivery would be centralised at the Support Centre.

"So instead of going to post offices or courier companies, customers can go to the centre. We will collect all these items and will sign up with a courier service," she said. "So in a day or two we will do delivery, whether it's internally or overseas, we do collection at a set time and delivery at a set time."

They will also be looking to sign up cube shops to help promote their services to the vendors. Vendors will send their goods to the Support Centre for scheduled distribution to different cube shops.

"So instead of you going to the different cube shops, whoever manages the centre will deliver it to them for you."

The proposed centre will also offer value-added services to help businesses grow. This includes offering warehouse services to online vendors at the ISM Beribi Office and complex.

"If you are home-based, you don't have space at home or a physical shop, you have a lot of goods but nowhere to keep them. With these services, Insya Allah we will be offering warehousing services to online vendors which is located at the ISM as mentioned."

In addition, the proposed centre would offer branding, marketing, website and other value-added services from other local entrepreneurs.

"We also would like to offer companies who are experts in branding, marketing and websites, maybe we can match you with them, because maybe these businesses' products don't yet have a strong brand," she said.

Also proposed for the centre is an e-commerce masterclass, which will offer training programmes for vendors to set up e-stores, payment solutions, analytics, blogs and more.

Another notable proposed value-added service is for food vendors, in the form of pay-per-use shared kitchen facilities with industrial grade equipment and associated HSE standards at vacant units of the Beribi, Serambangun and Belait complexes.

The management of these services, such as warehousing and shared kitchen facilities, can be invested, operated and maintained by local businesses selected through open tender.

Going forward, it was shared in the dialogue that DARe will be inviting SMEs to be part of a focus group to provide further input into this proposal.

Explaining the current situation, she said that there are a growing number of young entrepreneurs who are taking advantage of the Internet and social media to sell products and services. A lot of them are still in school and university.

Most are home-based, run and operated by the owner on a part-time basis, with many of them still working full-time day jobs and doing business part-time.

Marketing for these businesses is done via social media such as Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp, while the products themselves are mainly homemade (food, snacks), bought by wholesale (novelty, toys, apparel) and may include customisation or value addition (jewellery, accessories, lifestyle items).

"We feel that it is a great starting point for you, especially the young entrepreneurs, so this can be turned into a viable business," she highlighted. "We'd like to help you, because we want to encourage economic participation by the younger generation."

In her presentation, she said that, currently, most vendors have no experience in running a business, and as most of them do not have physical shops for reasons such as not being able to afford rental, they usually participate in pop-up events such as fairs, festivals, exhibitions.

They also tend to turn to cube shops, which she said are popular because such shops offer vendors a physical presence at minimal cost.

Some products have potential for export, she noted, as they can appeal to the much wider regional/global market. However, a lack of experience and resources as well as challenges such as logistics are limiting the growth of these businesses, she added.

"That's why we came up with a proposal for the Online Vendors Support Centre," she said.

Source:
@BRUDIRECT.COM

by BruDirect.com

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