I’m your host Michael LeBlanc and in today’s episode, a preview to the great thought leadership live in person on the stage at the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum happening April 21st in L.A., I get a sneak preview chatting with June Van Heel, Head of International at Bala, Isabel Gan, Founder/CEO of Rose Planet International Brand Management Inc and Nicole Granucci, Vice President of Product Marketing of Citcon.
Welcome back to Global E-Commerce Tech Talks, episode 23!
I’m your host Michael LeBlanc and in today’s episode, a preview to the great thought leadership live in person on the stage at the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum happening April 21st in L.A., I get a sneak preview chatting with June Van Heel, Head of International at Bala, Isabel Gan, Founder/CEO of Rose Planet International Brand Management Inc and Nicole Granucci, Vice President of Product Marketing of Citcon.
Together with GELF co-founder Kent Allen they will be exploring where the best opportunities lie in APAC for ecommerce growth in 2022 – and how global DTC leaders can succeed in China, Japan and South Korea. For this episode, you’ll learn a bit about each of them, hear two starts and one stop advice for brands and retailers, and hint of what they will be talking about on the stage April 21 in L.A.
Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum (GELF) co-founder Kent Allen joins June Van Heel, Head of International at Bala, Isabel Gan, Founder/CEO of Rose Planet International Brand Management Inc and Nicole Granucci, Vice President of Product Marketing of Citcon to explore where the best opportunities lie in APAC for ecommerce growth in 2022 – and how global DTC leaders can succeed in China, Japan and South Korea.
GELF’s APAC Regional Showcase kicks off the morning breakout sessions at GELF LA ’22 on Thursday April 21st. Join us at the upcoming GELF LA event in West Hollywood at the venerable Director’s Guild of America, 7920 Sunset Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90046. Learn how today’s shopping journeys differ among APAC shoppers – and how global ecommerce leaders are succeeding in China, Japan, South Korea and beyond. Retailers and DTC brands can register at globalecommerceleadersforum.com
Our guests each talk about their extensive retail ecommerce backgrounds, their experience building DTC brands in Asia and developing new distribution channels in China as well as the shifting APAC ecommerce marketspace. We wrap up with insights for listeners summarized into two-starts and one-stop. June, Isabel and Nicole will also provide an overview of what they will be discussing at GELF LA ‘22; starting with a post-pandemic overview of the state of the ecommerce in APAC.
We look forward to getting the GELF community back together live and in-person after the long layoff since GELF LA 20 in Feb 2020’ GELF’s biggest and best West Coast gathering ever! GELF LA 2022 will bring together leaders from retailers and brands selling direct-to-consumer. Top global consumer brands will join digital natives from the fashion and apparel world, health and beauty, consumer electronics and other leading retail verticals for a full day of education, sharing and networking. Digital commerce innovators, cross-border ecommerce experts and global ecommerce thought leaders will debate how the “echo-boom” in global DTC and cross-border ecommerce translates into new revenue opportunities as the growth of retail ecommerce accelerates.
If you liked this podcast you can follow us on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Amazon music podcast channel or your favourite podcast platform, please rate and review with a five star rating and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail and cross-borders commerce industry.
I’m Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc and Company Inc. and you can learn more about me on www.meleblanc.co, and you can learn more about the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum and continue to keep up with the latest on cross-border commerce online at https://www.globalecommerceleadersforum.com/
Michael LeBlanc is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice. He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career. Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada’s top retail industry podcast, The Voice of Retail, plus Global E-Commerce Tech Talks and The Food Professor with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois. You can learn more about Michael here or on LinkedIn.
Michael LeBlanc 00:05
Welcome back to the Global E-Commerce Tech Talks podcast Episode 23. I'm your host Michael Leblanc and in today's episode, a preview to the great thought leadership live in person on the stage at the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum happening April 21st in L.A., I got a sneak peek, preview, chatting with June Van Heel, Head of International at Bala, Isabel Gan, Founder / CEO of Rose Planet International Brand Management, and Nicole Granucci, Vice President of Product Marketing of Citcon.
Michael LeBlanc 00:33
Together with GELF co-founder Kent Allen they will be exploring where the best opportunities lie in APAC for ecommerce growth in 2022 – and how global DTC leaders can succeed in China, Japan and South Korea. For this episode, you’ll learn a bit about each of them, hear two starts and one stop advice for brands and retailers, and hint of what they will be talking about on the stage April 21 in L.A.
Michael LeBlanc 00:56
Let's listen in now.
Michael LeBlanc 00:58
All right, we're looking forward to an amazing panel in L.A, April 21. And we got three amazing guests and I gotta let them introduce themselves. Nicole, kick us off. Tell us about, a bit about yourself and who you work for and what the company does.
Nicole Granucci 01:11
Sure. Thank you. My name is Nicole Granucci. I'm the Head of Product Marketing at Citon and Citcon is a global payments gateway. We help businesses grow very fast, by enabling merchants to accept the payment methods that the customers prefer no matter where they are. So essentially, we provide an easier, better way to pay and a better way to add more payments.
June Van Heel 01:34
Hi, my name is June Van Heel and I am the Head of International at Bala and Bala is a brand that's focused on making your workout equipment aesthetic and so you know, We're known for our Bangles, which are basically weight bracelets that you could put on or even anklets that you can put on your wrist or your ankles while you exercise and we've recently launched the Bala Beam, which is basically a weighted bar as well as many other products and so you know, we're in the fitness and wellness space.
Michael LeBlanc 02:15
It's pretty neat. You've got some interesting investors behind you as well, right?
June Van Heel 02:18
Yeah, so we were featured on Shark Tank a couple years ago, and we've received investments from Mark Cuban and Maria Sharapova. So, that was very exciting.
Michael LeBlanc 02:27
Isabel, last but certainly not least, tell us about yourself.
Isabel Gan 02:30
Thanks. Hi, everyone. My name is Isabel Gan. I'm a Founder and CEO of Rose Planet International Brand Management company. We specialize in building US brands in the Chinese market. So, we are exclusive marketing and distribution partners for brands that want to build China as a second home market. We provide a turnkey solution for US brands to enter and also expand and we are just like a extended office from the brand to operate and help the brand be successful in China.
Michael LeBlanc 03:05
Alright, so the panel is the Regional Showcase Asia Pacific Ecommerce Strategies, Nicole, I'm gonna pop back to you and in this format, just kind of a teaser format for the podcast, for the event coming up, two starts and one stop advice, for the listeners, about based on your experience what you're experiencing today and you've got a great experience from retail, GAP all the way through to Visa, so you've got a ton of experience. Two starts, one stop.
Nicole Granucci 03:33
All right, two starts. Well, the first thing to start doing is that if you are a merchant in North America, and you are not thinking about expanding your business into APAC and accepting forms of payment that APAC customers want to use, you're going to miss out. You can't ignore this market. So, you've got to start preparing and planning for it now. The second start, I would say is as you look globally, it's very important to understand the barriers that are there and why your customers are abandoning their carts, and you're faced with lots of chargebacks. So, what's very important to think about is start, start thinking about how you can remove these barriers by moving forward with a partner that can help you facilitate more payments with easy integration and just one reconciliation.
Michael LeBlanc 04:27
Nicole, you said, off mic, you were talking about what would you call it, a perfect storm of barriers. Tell us a little bit about that for a second.
Nicole Granucci 04:35
Sure. When, when you take a look at the barriers that are happening cross-border, there's not really one singular piece that's causing all the problems, they work together in this little symphony. The first piece is high cart abandonment. So, we're seeing that 76% of merchants actually fail to sell due to a lack of a recognized payment method. So, if you're going to check out and you want to use the wallet that you like, and it's not there, you very well may abandon that cart, and we're seeing that quite a bit, hand-in-hand with that, are low approval rates. So, when we see these overseas credit card validation that happened with western payment methods across APACs specific-, particularly in eastern Asia, what we're seeing is there's a great deal of fraud, as performers are trying to steal that information. So, the approval rates are plummeting.
Nicole Granucci 05:27
And then with that high chargeback rates are happening due to that international payment fraud. So, all of these barriers along with language barriers, even at the at the checkout and the point of sale, are ways that merchants are trying to figure out how to get through because if you can't address each of these barriers, you’re, your, your western card methods just aren't going to get you that top line growth that you need to experience to scale. So, these are just four of the barriers that we face and then many of our merchants also have nuances depending on the country that we're talking about.
Michael LeBlanc 06:01
Sure, and is it fair to say that these barriers are higher, or more prevalent than they were, let's say pre COVID are in the past. So, is it you know, this perfect storm? Many of what you described is things that have kind of been poking around ecommerce for a while, but it sounds like they're reaching a new, a new level, so to speak.
Nicole Granucci 06:18
I think that the, the pandemic was a bit of a tipping point for E commerce in general. And with that, and the fraud has just been prevalent, and we've seen that really grow. So from that perspective, I do believe that the you know, the fraud and the overseas card validation is definitely climbing but these other issues that are raised have been around for a while and what's really raising them is the lift and shift of the population, the demand for Western products across people that live in all of these countries and the ability to pay it's, it's really causing, you know, that's what's causing the issue. So pandemic was part of it but population growth, entering new segments, people demanding more convenience with the way that they pay are really tipping everything over the scales.
Michael LeBlanc 07:04
Alright, two starts and you've given us some great background, what, what should the listeners think about not doing, moving forward?
Nicole Granucci 07:12
I think that listeners should think about if you're, if you're a North American merchant, and you are only allowing western payment methods around the world. So, you're thinking, you know what, credit card is king, everyone loves to use it, it seems to work, it's fine. You have to stop thinking that way because of all of the barriers that I just mentioned but more importantly, because people all over the world are preferring digital wallets. They like their e-wallets. They like their localized payment methods. It's part of the culture. It's part of what they've grown up with. And as we start to look at these new segments with the millennials and the Zoomers are buying more and more and coming into this affluent area. If you don't recognize that you need to offer them the way to pay that they prefer you're going to lose out
Michael LeBlanc 08:03
All right, Isabel, I'm gonna move to you off mic, you were talking about, you know, expectations about things like speed of delivery, you understand the market. So, well give us your two starts and one stop for the listeners.
Isabel Gan 08:15
Sure, thanks, Michael, I will actually start with what don't do. A lot of US brands when hearing the growth stories in Asia Pacific and especially China, they want to, they're getting excited, but they're also thinking that if by just going to China, just doing what is like minimum required, there could be a surge of sales and eventually profit profitability. So that's, I think that, that's very short term view of the market and don't do is stop thinking about China as a long term-, short term, short term opportunity but more of a long, have a long term perspective and that is what are you don't do but then once you have a long term perspective and commitment for the market, and then you are ready to evaluate what are the entry modes, that's best mentioned modes to go into a, into the market. That's what we I think I suggest doing is one treat that market as if it's a another home market, what is successful here may not be always successful there, but all of the brand building marketing for marketing funnel will be very, very helpful for build a brand in a long term, for long term success instead of just to sell it for three years and then have the brand equity impacted.
Isabel Gan 09:47
And then second thing that I think I suggest people do is to also choose the best entry mode and I, I have worked with companies that has 10 billion or 20 billion dollars of revenue before and smaller companies 25 or 50 million dollars of revenue before, but what I would suggest is that choose the enter modes that fit for your sites and definitely partner right and don't just go along by yourself without a right partner, in China market.
Michael LeBlanc 10:21
Right on, hey, a question for you and I don't know if it's a fair question to ask but when you say in for the long term, what, what should our expectations be is this, you know, two years, three years, five years just to set expectations about how long it takes relative to a phrase like the long run, what's your idea, what's, what's a good, what's a good outcome?
Isabel Gan 10:42
So, the good long run, would be three to five years instead of one to six months or a year?
Michael LeBlanc 10:48
All right, June, vast experience-, you're new to Bala but vast experience in the market and your 12 years, your last gig and I guess you were brought into Bala to help them figure this market out. So, from your perspective, two starts and one stop.
June Van Heel 11:02
Yeah. So, Bala is a newer brand and US based brand that's, you know, planning to expand internationally and, you know, my start would be if you're in the same position or similar position as Bala. Make sure to focus on different regions, separately. So you know, there's, there's what works for Canada, there's what works for UK, Europe, and Asia Pacific, just completely separately, and the Middle East as well and so that would be my one start is really learn those different markets and my second start, kind of ties to what Isabel said, is don't be afraid to ask for help from the experts and, you know, I say that because myself included, even though I have been doing this for a long time, the, the region's evolve and change so much, especially during a pandemic and it's important that you have an in country or in Region expert helping you out regardless of what model you tend you plan to approach.
June Van Heel 12:18
So, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to get a distributor, it doesn't necessarily mean that you have to open an office, but it really helps to learn the nuances from somebody who is there on the field. Because you know, the difficulties, it's not just in the payment method. There’re difficulties in logistics, there's difficulties with local customer service, and there's just so much so it really helps to get your experts to weigh in.
June Van Heel 12:50
My one stop would be, it's never been easier, in my opinion, to enter their international market despite these challenges, because there are just so many tools and platforms, etc., that make it able for everybody. So, I would say, you know, don't not enter a market because of barriers to entry or failure-, fear of failure. You, you know, people demand international brands, people really love American brands and, you know, I think that you lose out because people are, you know, don't know how to enter markets or are unwilling, and you know, it does take time to build a brand but, you know, not doing so is more dangerous. So, those would be my two starts and a stop.
Michael LeBlanc 13:43
Well, excellent. So, speaking of listening to experts, we have three experts ready to put on a panel on April 21 GELF. So, I'm going to ping it back for a couple of quick seconds to each of you. What are you going to be talking about at GELF? So, Nicole, why don't we start with you for a couple of seconds and what are you going to be talking about on the stage?
Nicole Granucci 14:03
Sure. Well, really, I'd like to present on stage the lay of the land. So, this is really an overview of why global ecommerce growth is so important across APAC, and some of the nuances for the countries particularly as we talk about Asia and I'll also be talking a little bit about some of the insights around cross border ecommerce growth, what the opportunity is, what the barriers are that many merchants face, and how essentially to overcome them, and why it's so important to start thinking about what customers want and the ways that they want to pay.
Michael LeBlanc 14:36
All right, Isabel over to you.
Isabel Gan 14:39
Sure. So, I will talk about how we build Manduca in China, the success story, and also, I want to also talk about like three unspoken realities for cross border for China, some of the misunderstandings, and then lastly, if we have time, we will I would love to also Talk about the new trends and also changes over the pandemic for the ecommerce landscape in China.
Michael LeBlanc 15:10
All right, fantastic. Speaking to the unspoken, I love that I'm gonna sign up just to just to hear that, June, bring us home-, June, bring us home, talk about what you'll be talking about on the stage.
June Van Heel 15:21
Yeah, so I think the big focus will be, well, because it is our return after COVID, how the pandemic has really impacted international business and, and really specifically in doing business in APAC and so, you know, I'd love to discuss how things have changed per region and per country. Also, would like to speak to how brands work with distributors overseas, and how to best communicate the brand in, in the regions. So, kind of stepping away from what we've been discussing for the last few minutes and entering more into like the marketing and social aspects of doing business.
Michael LeBlanc 16:12
All right, well, fantastic. Well, June, Isabel, and Nicole, thanks so much for joining me on the Global E-Commerce Tech Talks podcast. What a great preview to your panel coming up and with that, I'll wish you safe travels and much success and thanks again for joining me.
Michael LeBlanc 16:27
We look forward to getting the GELF community back together live and in-person after the long layoff since GELF LA 20 in Feb 2020’ GELF’s biggest and best West Coast gathering ever! GELF LA 2022 will bring together leaders from retailers and brands selling direct-to-consumer. Top global consumer brands will join digital natives from the fashion and apparel world, health and beauty, consumer electronics and other leading retail verticals for a full day of education, sharing and networking. Digital commerce innovators, cross-border ecommerce experts and global ecommerce thought leaders will debate how the “echo-boom” in global DTC and cross-border ecommerce translates into new revenue opportunities as the growth of retail ecommerce accelerates.
Michael LeBlanc 17:09
If you liked this podcast, you can follow us on Apple iTunes, Spotify, Amazon music podcast channel or your favorite podcast platform, please rate and review with a five star rating and be sure and recommend to a friend or colleague in the retail and cross-borders commerce industry.
Michael LeBlanc 17:09
I’m Michael LeBlanc, Founder and President of M.E. LeBlanc and Company Inc. and you can learn more about me on www.meleblanc.co, and you can learn more about the Global E-Commerce Leaders Forum and continue to keep up with the latest on cross-border commerce online at https://www.globalecommerceleadersforum.com/
Michael LeBlanc 17:40
Safe travels everyone
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
barriers, APAC, market, payment methods, merchants, China, Bala, pandemic, cross border, growth, brands, Isabel, ecommerce, brand, commerce, Nicole, global, Asia Pacific, marketing, experts