As e-commerce market in Indonesia getting more and more crowded, it becomes a challenge for the players within, especially when there are more and more products offered by a brand. Therefore, MilaMili serves as a bridge between brand and endorser so that they may collaborate in producing a collection that tells stories, in form of online catalogue, in order to inspire buyers while purchasing items they deserve.
MilaMili was founded by two Founders, Gesvyn Tjandra as the CEO and Aditya Pradiptadarma as the CTO, when they purchased an item online. Tjandra revealed that sometimes he misses a really nice brand when shopping online because there are too many selection available.
That’s when both of them initiated MilaMili. They believe that brand’s first impression is everything. This is particularly because buyers usually compare one brand to another only to discover the difference between those two. That inspires buyers in selecting certain products as the value of those products will get elevated once buyers know their”background story”.
“We feel that MilaMili’s catalogue is a ‘unique tool’ to display, inspire and sell products in collection which can be shared everywhere or displayed on their website (of e-commerce players). We are different, because our catalogue tells stories and customers can learn about the brand they desire, get inspired and purchase the products, all in one package,” Tjandra claimed.
He added,
“Our mission is to build a community in which we can connect brands and endorsers and let them collaborating and producing wonderful collection in order to inspire consumers.”
MilaMili and business strategy
The word MilaMili derives from Bahasa, which means “pilah or memilah” and “pilih or memilih”. Tjandra and Pradiptadarma picked the name because that’s exactly what users do at their website. “It also sounds catchy and memorable, this is important to enhance the brand awareness,” Tjandra said.
Basically, MilaMili is a social discovery platform which facilitates users in finding collection of brands or merchants in form of catalogue. As for companies, the platform facilitates them to create, manage, and publish their online catalogue without having to hire more designer of IT staff. The platform doesn’t directly target end users, as it eyes for SMEs of any segment, from fashion to lifestyle as a whole.
It’s quite simple to use MilaMili. You only need to input the image of products that want to be displayed in the catalogue into MilaMili. The images will then be stored in your account’s database, so that later you may pick which images to be put into the catalogue.
Once the catalogue is finished, you may share it via social media like Facebook and Twitter. You may also attach it on your own website. If you want to publish it offline, the catalogue may be downloaded and saved in PDF to later be printed.
Monetization and future plans
It should be noted that MilaMili has yet been officially launched nad is still in beta testing. Once it’s inaugurated, MilaMili plans to employ freemium as its monetization method. The service can be utilized for free, but users may upgrade their subscription to get even better services. MilaMili is still reluctant in revealing how much it has spent since it’s still in the market validation phase.
Tjandra claimed, “We’re currently partnering with a number of privately chosen e-commerce players for the beta testing. In the future, we would be glad to collaborate with more local brands that focus on fashion or other lifestyle industries who put their trust on ‘good branding’ method.”
“For the short term, our main focus is to grow content and validate the market much deeper,” he concluded.
Update: There is an added sentence in the seventh paragraph regarding the definition of MilaMili based on the response of one of Founders, which states that MilaMili is a social discovery platform.
