Lazada PH gets 7 million visits on 'birthday sale'

MANILA - Online shopping site Lazada said it recorded nearly 7 million visits from the Philippines during its four-day "birthday sale" held in March.

Lazada said the figure is eight times higher "than average traffic of one of the biggest shopping malls in the Philippines."

Lazada Philippines is celebrating its fourth year in operation, capped with a sale held from March 15 to March 18.

"The campaign was participated in by more than 2,300 SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) merchants and more than thirty local and international brand partners--all with special sale offers to online shoppers," the company said in a statement.

Among the top categories during the sale were Mobiles & Tablets, Health & Beauty, and Home & Living, where about 6,000 mobile phones, 2,000 bluetooth smartwatches and 1,500 hair straighteners were sold.

Lazada said it also sold over 4,500 packs of diapers online.

"A large bulk of orders came from Metro Manila, Cebu, and Cavite respectively. Orders were also recorded to have reached the Dinagat Islands, Sultan Kudarat and the Mountain Province," the firm said.

Lazada is planning to launch another app-exclusive sale from April 7-10.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com

Lazada: No room for suspicious sellers

MANILA - Lazada Philippines warned merchants against selling fake products on the online shopping site.

Lazada Philippines co-founder and chief executive Inanc Balci said the company does not tolerate suspicious sellers, and will immediately remove their products if found guilty of selling fake items.

"In the event of any exceptional cases of suspicious product being sold on the platform, we take decisive action including investigating the merchant and removing the products from our website," Balci told ABS-CBNnews.com on Tuesday.

Lazada was recently sued by the Philippine distributor of Korean cosmetics brand Etude House for allegedly carrying fake products.

The products were sold through the Lazada Marketplace, a platform for third-party sellers.

Balci said the company removed the seller from the website after conducting an investigation.

"For this specific case, there is an ongoing legal proceeding and we are in no position to comment on the development of the case, but this is how we approach the problem," he said.

He added that Lazada merchants are contractually required to be fully compliant with Philippine laws and are obliged to continually assess their compliance with the laws.

Balci said Lazada has a 24-hour call center to address customer concerns, including authenticity issues.

"We take all feedback very seriously and we have zero-tolerance policy," he said.

The company is also implementing buyer protection and money-back guarantee policies.

"We are not here for the short term, we are not here to make profit out of this kind of [suspicious] transactions. For Lazada to be successful, we need our customers' trust, coming back to us," said Balci.

He noted that in the past, Lazada took down several suspicious sellers as a pre-emptive measure to protect online shoppers.

There are currently no Etude House products being sold on Lazada.com.ph.

But the Philippine distributor of Korean brand Etude House, Rosa Fioure House Corp., said it will pursue the criminal case against Lazada for violations of Sections 155, 168 and 169 of the Intellectual Property Code due to the selling and/or facilitating the sale of fake and/or counterfeit Etude House of Korea products.

The case has been filed before the Office of the City Prosecutor of Makati.

"We are pushing through with the case, we owe it to our consumers," the Philippine distributor said.

Etude House is a Korean cosmetics brand launched in the Philippines in 2009. It now has more than 40 stores nationwide.

Lazada, meanwhile, is owned by Rocket Internet and is one of the top B2C eCommerce market places in Southeast Asia.

source: www.abs-cbnnews.com