When it first launched, LocalBrand was one of the Indonesian startup who was very clear about where they’re going and how they position themselves in the fashion-ecommerce industry. LocalBrand wants to be the platform for Indonesian fashion designers, the be the center stage for Indonesia’s fashion industry.
Currently, Muhammad claims that they receives 50,000 monthly visits accessing more than 70 local fashion brands, with more than 1000 types of fashion items. Their transaction number is also increasing more than 30% every month since they revamped the website last July.
It’s been a year after LocalBrand debuted their e-commerce service and up to this day they have added a payment platform that supports credit card in order to facilitate international shoppers, which CEO Sayed Muhammad said currently to be one of their main focus. But aside from adding a payment gateway, Muhammad also emphasise on their effort to beef up the content of the website, “This is because not only do we want to be the leading fashion e-commerce of Indonesia, we also want to be the trailblazer of Indonesian urban fashion, which people can look up to in terms of style and fashion” he added.
All and all, LocalBrand is an online shop and it’s no secret that fashion and apparel is one of the most popular stuff for Indonesian people to look for, at least online. But owning a boutique and a fashion online store is two totally different animal, especially in Indonesia where e-commerce is still in its infancy. “We learned that Indonesian market is still immature when it comes to online shopping” he said. Muhammad even notes that even though their services are mainly online, a lot of customers prefer to order and transact offline. The company, said Muhammad, is trying to educate the market by providing a very simple, easy online service and of course good after-sales.
When asked about the direction he’s taking for the company, Muhammad seems to be torn between the local market positioning and global expansion plan. Muhammad said “locally, we want to focus on urban market with age ranging from 18-30 in A-B segments. Globally, we’ll try to make deals with international partner in order to introduce our product and services to the world”. It’s a big vision for a local company, although one can argue that fashion is not as “local” as social networking or e-commerce products. Again, Muhammad seems confident about his vision of “taking our brand to a higher level. That is, the world”.
The next plausible question would be: how are they planning to “take over the world”? First, according to Muhammad, is to make the website Internationally friendly (language, accepting credit cards, international shipping, etc). Second, is to partner with regional media and e-commerce companies. Muhammad said that he’s taking the first step into the internationalisation by going regional, “everything is still under progress but we expect this step to take us regional any time soon”.
Although it sounds very simple, it’s really not. Going regional is something that some startup needs, but in some case they don’t. However, Muhammad is certain with the steps he’s taking with LocalBrand’s internationalization strategy. “Jakarta itself is targeted by the Government of Indonesia to be Asian fashion city in 2015. So we’re basically riding along in the global train”.
photo credit: localbrand.co.id
