10 ms·

What is happening to Lazada is happening to all companies acquired by Alibaba

97 points by 7d7n 6y ago

rootsudo 6y ago
Makes sense. Lazada also has it's own set of problems for being a marketplace. Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers. There is great profit incentive/arbitrage because where Lazada is popular - there is great barriers of entry. South East Asia. High Tariffs. High Customs/Customs issues. Physical customs inspection. High shipping times. Then the last mile of fulfillment is the issue because of the consumer base being very spread out and not in city centers in South East Asia - bike courier is still most common way of delivery. Postal Mail does not work/will not deliver. Then there's of course shrink/fraud. It's fun conversation, it reminded me of ebay circa 2000's. Great time to make a name for yourself.
- geomark 6y ago
  Southeast Asia is pretty diverse. What you said about last mile fulfillment isn't at all true in Thailand. Postal mail is reliable all over the country and there are multiple other fast and reliable delivery services.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    SE Asia is diverse, but Thailand and Philippines experience the same issues, much worse than Singapore or Malayasia imo.
    - peteretep 6y ago
      Delivery in Thailand is excellent
      - geomark 6y ago
        That has been my experience, having ordered a hundred or more items in the last couple of years.
        culturestate 6y ago
        As with many things in logistics, it depends where you are. If you're trying to have a laptop delivered to a small village near, like, Chiang Rai, your experience will be different than if you were having it sent to Silom in Bangkok.
        peteretep 6y ago
        Chiang Rai has train, air and road access, and the roads in Northern Thailand out from it as a hub are excellent too. I’ve seen enough logistics vans here navigating the small number of dirt roads, and I’ve had frozen food delivered to islands without road access from Bangkok in a refrigerated vehicle the whole way too. On the whole, logistics here seem on a par with the UK which also has a few hard-to-reach areas.
        soonnow 6y ago
        The same experience as well. Last month I forgot the road on the address of a order, just the building, in Bangkok, one of the biggest cities in the world. Package still arrived, as I had assumed. In my opinion it works as well or better than in Germany. Same for the public transport, but that's another issue.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - wyclif 6y ago
      My observation is that the Philippines is a lot worse than Thailand when it comes to delivery. It's a lot less dependable and sometimes they want an additional payment for the delivery when you were promised there wouldn't be one.
    - culturestate 6y ago
      > much worse than Singapore or Malayasia imo Singapore is obviously an outlier, but Malaysia faces the same kinds of issues outside of major cities that every other country in the region does. Solving[1] last-mile delivery for ex-urban SEA is one of the biggest challenges in logistics right now. 1. Which, in many cases, just means "making it semi-reliable and predictable"
  - wiradikusuma 6y ago
    Indonesia is the worst. Recently I attended a webinar that give free t-shirt for early attendees. I received whatsapp from the courier, telling me to pay USD40 for custom and taxes for the free t-shirt. I told him, you can keep the t-shirt (sent from India). When I told this to my friends, they said it's normal. Sometimes they buy books and got taxed twice the price of the books.
    - neurostimulant 6y ago
      Indonesia has really high import tariff for clothing/garments to protect local industries. The import tax should be <20% for typical consumer goods, and free for books since 2020 (actually I never got taxed buying books from international sellers in the past few years). If your experience is recent, maybe you're actually dealing with corrupt officials/employees trying to make quick buck?
  - wyclif 6y ago
    It is in the Philippines, where Lazada and Shopee are popular because of COD.
    - rootsudo 6y ago
      Correct, COD makes the courier liable and forces them to return/try to get payment. That's the biggest stressors in the PH. I also will never order w/o COD again. Too many times got scammed/never delivered to me. Wouldn't call it theft per se, but incompetence, yes, but fool me too many times, my fault for being trusting. Now as a seller, you are pretty much immune from chargebacks and having to delivery a quality product, it's super interesting, low trust dynamic.
- ackbar03 6y ago
  >Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers Really? I always thought drop shipping wouldn't work for somewhere like se Asia, only for places such as US where the purchasing power is significantly higher. Most of SE Asia I would assume has lower purchasing power than China
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    Lower purchase power, but still demand and no supply. Chinese vendors and dubious quality fills the demand - that's why it works. The Internet is in everyones cell phone, the marketplaces do local marketing to get a audience, and then they hide/don't make it obvious the fact that it's an international order - fulfilment can be local/china. Only USA/China, had a good agreement, that, benefitted China for some time with epacket mail being very very cheap, but still at a time where there were constant flights, air mail was affordable and customs would exempt lazada purchases under a certain value in SEA - Sometimes Lazada sellers would "fulfill" from Taiwan, but ship from China, as Taiwan is an ASEAN nation, and are exempt from the tariffs and such that general China may face. Fun games.
- rognjen 6y ago
  There are several points in your comment that don't match up with my experience. > Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers Before Alibaba acquisition this was not the case. In fact, it was the Alibaba integration that facilitated this. Secondly, as far as I know it's not drop shipping but they're actual Alibaba sellers that've been onboarded to Lazada. > There is great profit incentive/arbitrage Not sure what you mean by this exactly but there's little incentive for arbitrage because because they were Alibaba sellers but also because Alibaba delivers directly as well. So it was more of a marketing move rather than arbitrage. The integration did speed up shipping times however. > High Tariffs. High Customs/Customs issues. Physical customs inspection. High shipping times. I have only limited experience with import and that's with tobacco which was time consuming but orderly. For Alibaba goods however, the only one that applies is the high shipping times. Furthermore for the vast majority of goods below a certain value none of these apply. > last mile of fulfillment is the issue Overall true, but there are other issues rather than just being spread out. Specifically traffic, bad infrastructure and operational inefficiencies that impact last mile delivery efficiency even in urban centers. > consumer base being very spread out Of course heavily depends on the country with Singapore and Malaysia being far ahead, but Indonesia and Thailand being ~50-60% in urban areas. > bike courier is still most common way of delivery If you mean bicycle, that's definitely not the case. If you mean motorcycle, again heavily dependent on the country as well as the use-case. For instance in Vietnam and Indonesia motorcycles are used frequently, but in Malaysia and Singapore less so. Bicycles are only a gimmick. Motorcycles are also frequently used for more ad-hoc fulfillment. > Postal Mail does not work/will not deliver. 1. This might have been true ~5+ years ago but isn't any longer. 2. Even if it was, the post wasn't as developed here as in other parts of the world so a lot of third party logistics providers sprung up to fill the gap and they've better service.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    Bike as in Motorcycle. Postal Mail absolutely will not deliver to some parts in Philippines/Vietnam/Thailand. I can speak more accurately to Philippines, where parts in Luzon will not get serviced/it gets cosigned to a local carrier, LBC and even then they rely on the package having a reliable phone number/email address as they'll have to contact the receiver and pay for the service. Metro Manila is pretty much okay, but, even down south of Visayas (including Cebu, Ilo Ilo/Bocold) and especially Mindanao - Philippine Mail is not used at all, packages are cosigned to LBC to be picked up at their place, which ususally is a landmark like a Mall or town center. But usually Mall, if that area has it. The Philippines Mail system is a bit of a fun system, being founded by Spain, then USA take over (but not per se the USPS.)
verroq 6y ago
A screenshot from ngabbs is supposed to prove what exactly?
AdrianB1 6y ago
6. Declares the KPIs were achieved. I am seeing this more and more these days in all the companies I work with. Unless it's SOX, everybody lies (yes, House MD style).
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Similar, OKRs: https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-vc-john-doerr-sets-and-achieves-goals https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-vc-john-doerr-sets-and-achieves-...
m3kw9 6y ago
What’s KPI?
- grosswait 6y ago
  Typically key performance indicator
stunt 6y ago
The article doesn't give any insights about what is happening at Lazada. It also doesn't share any example of "other companies".
- redis_mlc 6y ago
  Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazada_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazada_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopee I visited Shopee's Manila office in 2018. It's nicer than most SV offices. Generally speaking, in Asia (and India), there is a cultural tradition of family founders retaining mgmt. leadership, not hiring outside professional managers as in the West. So takeovers have an additional hurdle in Asia of getting mgmt. mindshare.
valuearb 6y ago
This guy is just butthurt that Alibaba is a world leader in the all important KPI of highest volume manager turnover. No manager ever goes stale at Alibaba, they are always plucked when fresh!
viztor 6y ago
This is a meme, I fail to understand why it's HN worthy
- erdos4d 6y ago
  Perhaps the crowd smells truth...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
f430 6y ago
Malwarebytes shows this website is compromised. wtf?
runawaybottle 6y ago
Vulture startupism?
baybal2 6y ago
And this generally describes what Alibaba does to itself too. Human turnover there is very high, and the company subscribes to idea "beatings will continue until revenue improves"

97 points by 7d7n 6y ago

Makes sense. Lazada also has it's own set of problems for being a marketplace. Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers. There is great profit incentive/arbitrage because where Lazada is popular - there is great barriers of entry. South East Asia. High Tariffs. High Customs/Customs issues. Physical customs inspection. High shipping times. Then the last mile of fulfillment is the issue because of the consumer base being very spread out and not in city centers in South East Asia - bike courier is still most common way of delivery. Postal Mail does not work/will not deliver. Then there's of course shrink/fraud. It's fun conversation, it reminded me of ebay circa 2000's. Great time to make a name for yourself.

geomark 6y ago
Southeast Asia is pretty diverse. What you said about last mile fulfillment isn't at all true in Thailand. Postal mail is reliable all over the country and there are multiple other fast and reliable delivery services.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  SE Asia is diverse, but Thailand and Philippines experience the same issues, much worse than Singapore or Malayasia imo.
  - peteretep 6y ago
    Delivery in Thailand is excellent
    - geomark 6y ago
      That has been my experience, having ordered a hundred or more items in the last couple of years.
      - culturestate 6y ago
        As with many things in logistics, it depends where you are. If you're trying to have a laptop delivered to a small village near, like, Chiang Rai, your experience will be different than if you were having it sent to Silom in Bangkok.
        peteretep 6y ago
        Chiang Rai has train, air and road access, and the roads in Northern Thailand out from it as a hub are excellent too. I’ve seen enough logistics vans here navigating the small number of dirt roads, and I’ve had frozen food delivered to islands without road access from Bangkok in a refrigerated vehicle the whole way too. On the whole, logistics here seem on a par with the UK which also has a few hard-to-reach areas.
      - soonnow 6y ago
        The same experience as well. Last month I forgot the road on the address of a order, just the building, in Bangkok, one of the biggest cities in the world. Package still arrived, as I had assumed. In my opinion it works as well or better than in Germany. Same for the public transport, but that's another issue.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - wyclif 6y ago
    My observation is that the Philippines is a lot worse than Thailand when it comes to delivery. It's a lot less dependable and sometimes they want an additional payment for the delivery when you were promised there wouldn't be one.
  - culturestate 6y ago
    > much worse than Singapore or Malayasia imo Singapore is obviously an outlier, but Malaysia faces the same kinds of issues outside of major cities that every other country in the region does. Solving[1] last-mile delivery for ex-urban SEA is one of the biggest challenges in logistics right now. 1. Which, in many cases, just means "making it semi-reliable and predictable"
- wiradikusuma 6y ago
  Indonesia is the worst. Recently I attended a webinar that give free t-shirt for early attendees. I received whatsapp from the courier, telling me to pay USD40 for custom and taxes for the free t-shirt. I told him, you can keep the t-shirt (sent from India). When I told this to my friends, they said it's normal. Sometimes they buy books and got taxed twice the price of the books.
  - neurostimulant 6y ago
    Indonesia has really high import tariff for clothing/garments to protect local industries. The import tax should be <20% for typical consumer goods, and free for books since 2020 (actually I never got taxed buying books from international sellers in the past few years). If your experience is recent, maybe you're actually dealing with corrupt officials/employees trying to make quick buck?
- wyclif 6y ago
  It is in the Philippines, where Lazada and Shopee are popular because of COD.
  - rootsudo 6y ago
    Correct, COD makes the courier liable and forces them to return/try to get payment. That's the biggest stressors in the PH. I also will never order w/o COD again. Too many times got scammed/never delivered to me. Wouldn't call it theft per se, but incompetence, yes, but fool me too many times, my fault for being trusting. Now as a seller, you are pretty much immune from chargebacks and having to delivery a quality product, it's super interesting, low trust dynamic.
ackbar03 6y ago
>Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers Really? I always thought drop shipping wouldn't work for somewhere like se Asia, only for places such as US where the purchasing power is significantly higher. Most of SE Asia I would assume has lower purchasing power than China
- rootsudo 6y ago
  Lower purchase power, but still demand and no supply. Chinese vendors and dubious quality fills the demand - that's why it works. The Internet is in everyones cell phone, the marketplaces do local marketing to get a audience, and then they hide/don't make it obvious the fact that it's an international order - fulfilment can be local/china. Only USA/China, had a good agreement, that, benefitted China for some time with epacket mail being very very cheap, but still at a time where there were constant flights, air mail was affordable and customs would exempt lazada purchases under a certain value in SEA - Sometimes Lazada sellers would "fulfill" from Taiwan, but ship from China, as Taiwan is an ASEAN nation, and are exempt from the tariffs and such that general China may face. Fun games.
rognjen 6y ago
There are several points in your comment that don't match up with my experience. > Majority of sellers on Lazada were just dropshipping from Chinese wholesalers Before Alibaba acquisition this was not the case. In fact, it was the Alibaba integration that facilitated this. Secondly, as far as I know it's not drop shipping but they're actual Alibaba sellers that've been onboarded to Lazada. > There is great profit incentive/arbitrage Not sure what you mean by this exactly but there's little incentive for arbitrage because because they were Alibaba sellers but also because Alibaba delivers directly as well. So it was more of a marketing move rather than arbitrage. The integration did speed up shipping times however. > High Tariffs. High Customs/Customs issues. Physical customs inspection. High shipping times. I have only limited experience with import and that's with tobacco which was time consuming but orderly. For Alibaba goods however, the only one that applies is the high shipping times. Furthermore for the vast majority of goods below a certain value none of these apply. > last mile of fulfillment is the issue Overall true, but there are other issues rather than just being spread out. Specifically traffic, bad infrastructure and operational inefficiencies that impact last mile delivery efficiency even in urban centers. > consumer base being very spread out Of course heavily depends on the country with Singapore and Malaysia being far ahead, but Indonesia and Thailand being ~50-60% in urban areas. > bike courier is still most common way of delivery If you mean bicycle, that's definitely not the case. If you mean motorcycle, again heavily dependent on the country as well as the use-case. For instance in Vietnam and Indonesia motorcycles are used frequently, but in Malaysia and Singapore less so. Bicycles are only a gimmick. Motorcycles are also frequently used for more ad-hoc fulfillment. > Postal Mail does not work/will not deliver. 1. This might have been true ~5+ years ago but isn't any longer. 2. Even if it was, the post wasn't as developed here as in other parts of the world so a lot of third party logistics providers sprung up to fill the gap and they've better service.
- rootsudo 6y ago
  Bike as in Motorcycle. Postal Mail absolutely will not deliver to some parts in Philippines/Vietnam/Thailand. I can speak more accurately to Philippines, where parts in Luzon will not get serviced/it gets cosigned to a local carrier, LBC and even then they rely on the package having a reliable phone number/email address as they'll have to contact the receiver and pay for the service. Metro Manila is pretty much okay, but, even down south of Visayas (including Cebu, Ilo Ilo/Bocold) and especially Mindanao - Philippine Mail is not used at all, packages are cosigned to LBC to be picked up at their place, which ususally is a landmark like a Mall or town center. But usually Mall, if that area has it. The Philippines Mail system is a bit of a fun system, being founded by Spain, then USA take over (but not per se the USPS.)

verroq 6y ago

A screenshot from ngabbs is supposed to prove what exactly?

AdrianB1 6y ago

6. Declares the KPIs were achieved. I am seeing this more and more these days in all the companies I work with. Unless it's SOX, everybody lies (yes, House MD style).

redis_mlc 6y ago
Similar, OKRs: https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-vc-john-doerr-sets-and-achieves-goals https://hbr.org/2018/05/how-vc-john-doerr-sets-and-achieves-...

m3kw9 6y ago

What’s KPI?

grosswait 6y ago
Typically key performance indicator

stunt 6y ago

The article doesn't give any insights about what is happening at Lazada. It also doesn't share any example of "other companies".

redis_mlc 6y ago
Some links: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazada_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lazada_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shopee I visited Shopee's Manila office in 2018. It's nicer than most SV offices. Generally speaking, in Asia (and India), there is a cultural tradition of family founders retaining mgmt. leadership, not hiring outside professional managers as in the West. So takeovers have an additional hurdle in Asia of getting mgmt. mindshare.

valuearb 6y ago

This guy is just butthurt that Alibaba is a world leader in the all important KPI of highest volume manager turnover. No manager ever goes stale at Alibaba, they are always plucked when fresh!

viztor 6y ago

This is a meme, I fail to understand why it's HN worthy

erdos4d 6y ago
Perhaps the crowd smells truth...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

f430 6y ago

Malwarebytes shows this website is compromised. wtf?

runawaybottle 6y ago

Vulture startupism?

baybal2 6y ago

And this generally describes what Alibaba does to itself too. Human turnover there is very high, and the company subscribes to idea "beatings will continue until revenue improves"