Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on February 22, 2021 - February 28, 2021

As our healthcare professionals and frontliners fight to “flatten the curve”, one company is trying to “shorten the chain”. 

Everpeaks, a platform-agnostic e-commerce solution provider tells Digital Edge that it is in the midst of developing a fully integrated, duty-free, one-stop fulfilment service, using Malaysia as a global distribution hub. 

The idea behind this solution is to shorten the distribution supply chain, bringing brand owners closer to their end-users and allowing manufacturers to maximise their margins while minimising the supply chain-related costs that get passed on to consumers. 

“Our vision is to enable manufacturer-to-consumer e-commerce on a global scale, and across multiple e-commerce platforms. This is why our company exists, and everything we’ve done over the last few years and going forward is in service of that vision,” says Everpeaks founder and managing director Joachim Sebastian. 

The company is in the final stages of trialling its Fulfilment by Everpeaks (FBE) service. 

Having been in the ecosystem for the last eight years, Sebastian and his team have come to realise that e-commerce without effective fulfilment is meaningless. Ultimately, fulfilment (the process of getting the product to the buyer) is the definitive measure by which all successful e-commerce is measured. 

To be fair, e-commerce fulfilment in itself is not a particularly new concept. It was pioneered and adapted over the years by various e-commerce incumbents that have since become regional and global powerhouses. 

“If we take the Fulfilment by Lazada programme for example, yes, a brand owner can absolutely rely on Lazada’s solution — but only for orders that come through its store page,” says Sebastian. 

“We are different in this regard. We have developed an end-to-end fulfilment service that is entirely platform-agnostic. Our warehousing facilities, for instance, have the ability to seamlessly integrate into most e-commerce platforms and then provide real-time interfacing capabilities for the benefit of the brand owner. We aren’t exclusively integrated into any one marketplace.”

The fulfilment game is also, to varying degrees, occupied by a combination of old-industry distributor networks and bonded warehouse businesses. These networks can be prohibitively expensive for smaller businesses to tap into because of the former’s relatively high-cost structures. 

Everpeaks has sought, however, to distinguish itself by providing a highly scalable, platform-agnostic fulfilment service. According to Sebastian, the service is commercially viable for both small businesses just starting out in e-commerce as well MNCs looking to penetrate new markets. 

“Previously, we were focused on managing brand owners’ e-commerce businesses. That business, which we were in for the last eight years, gave us a deep understanding of how to execute fulfilment for businesses. This tends to be a very resource-intensive process, which a lot of small businesses don’t have the ability to do themselves,” he says. 

Furthermore, some players in the market represent themselves as being involved in the fulfilment game when, in fact, they offer only one or two fulfilment-related services, he adds.

FBE, on the other hand, is a combination of duty-free warehousing and repackaging capabilities, proprietary digital integration between said warehousing and the brand owner’s various online platforms and, finally, favourable shipping terms negotiated between Everpeaks and a slew of multinational logistics players. “As far as I can tell, no one else has integrated these disparate fulfilment services under one company,” says Sebastian. 

Everpeaks operates out of leased warehousing space in the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ) at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA), which effectively grants the operation duty-free status. This provides significant cost savings and reduces red tape for brand owners looking to store their merchandise in Malaysia. 

On the logistics and delivery front, this entails the physical transport of the product, whether to end-users or to other warehouses as the brand owner requires. This is done by Everpeaks’ logistics partners. “We’ve managed to secure quite favourable rates with companies such as DHL, FedEx and even UPS, since we do a lot of business with global brands,” says Sebastian. 

But the thing that ties these moving parts together is the technology. Everpeaks uses a combination of proprietary in-house processes and internally developed software, as well as third-party suites that it licenses from other developers. 

“Take, for example, a European electronics manufacturer looking to export and distribute a container load of smartphones throughout Southeast Asia. The goods are shipped to our warehouse via ocean channels. The container is then transported to our warehouse and then unloaded accordingly,” he explains. 

“The products are then scanned into our warehouse inventory management system. As soon as this is done, the company in Europe will see on its online interface confirmation that the products are now stocked with us. After that, the products are logged and integrated with the brand’s various online stores. Suppose there are 100,000 SKUs (stock-keeping units) at our facility: This number will now be collectively reflected in real time across the brand owner’s online platform.

“Suppose, then, that 10 SKUs are purchased via the brand’s Amazon page. As soon as this happens, the sale is logged with our facility and, immediately, the 10 units are separated, repackaged according to the brand owner’s specifications and shipped to the buyer, pretty much anywhere in the region, thanks to our existing arrangements with the multinational logistics players. 

“Thanks to the various technologies we employ, this entire process is done with minimal human interaction and all sales are reflected in real time on the brand owner’s online interface with our facility. We are able to quickly scale this entire, platform-agnostic fulfilment process and have the ability to accommodate up to 2,000 separate clients with our warehousing facilities.”

Everpeaks is looking to democratise the fulfilment process for SMEs around the world, regardless of their size. “Quite often, these businesses have developed or come into fantastic products that are getting a lot of traction online. Unfortunately, they end up getting hampered by a lack of economies of scale and an inability to commit to the large minimum order requirements. They don’t have the ability to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for storage space either. But thanks to our combination of storage, shipping and technology, we are able to provide very competitive rates to small businesses, and hopefully grow alongside them in the long haul,” says Sebastian.

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