Back in 2011, Satu Gadget Dot Com entered the e-commerce market in a big way, making their offerings on multiple e-marketplaces like Mudah, Lowyat.net, Lelong, Facebook, as well as their own official website.
According to Chan, the best thing about running the company was when they got return customers due to their positive service, as well as when they receive positive comments and reviews online, not only from customers, but from the media (both online and offline) and their brand partners as well.
In the beginning, the difficulty had come from remaining competitively-priced, being able to acquire stock of the latest models of hardware as soon as they could, as well as handling issues with warranties and keeping inventory.
They resolve these issues by assigning specific roles to members in their team, and worked on these issues day and night. As they realised that the problems never stopped cropping up, they worked to develop a habit of coming up with more solutions than needed, which makes them prepared to face any possible challenges more easily.
Our company’s focus has, for the most part, remained online. Our initial operations were to send online orders via dispatch or courier service, but two months after we started, we opened our retail store with a total of six employees to handle both retail and online operations.
It also feels great when we have our company group photo taken with our current staff of over 50 full-timers and part-timers. This is a reminder that we have grown so much and come so far from our beginnings
It was a difficult start, according to Chan. Satu Gadget had started with zero sales on all of their sales platforms, which led to the team tackling the issues of product pricing, as well as understanding the importance of the product’s description, and functioning through delivery lead time.
Among the strengths of Satu Gadget as a whole, according to Chan, is not only the variety of their products and their competitive pricing, but also the presentation of the product and the customer service, both before and after the sale, that stands them in good stead.
Chan noted that the accuracy and clarity of the description, the after sales service and speed of answering inquiries, as well as having ready stock and informing customers of any out-of-stock products quickly were all important steps that have become standard procedure at Satu Gadget.
When asked about his opinion of the local e-commerce scene, Chan commented that it was expanding very quickly, and would grow better with the rise of more quality merchants. One item Chan stressed was the importance of the community working together to fight scammers, be they merchants, customers, or platforms. Another issue was the reliability of courier services.
In order (for the e-commerce industry) to grow better, courier services are very important, and should be improved further. It would be a big problem if online sales grew without the support of a reliable courier service, especially if parcels got lost, which would result in a loss of trust from the buyer, and a loss of money for the seller.
I feel very proud that we have achieved this award after years of servicing the online market, and I believe that awards should be given to courier services as well for their support of the e-commerce industry. Giving awards to courier services could also encourage their management to do better