If you are planning to start a venture in Thailand, starting an Online Store in Thailand can be a great option. Irrespective of the fact as whether you are a Thai or a foreigner, this business in Thailand is surely going to yield returns for you. But before delving deep into the research and process, you must know about the procedures that you have to go through in accomplishing this objective of yours. This article, prepared after taking inputs from Thai industry experts and legal professionals, will help you in getting all the relevant details.
Why Should You go For Online Business in Thailand?
Online retail sales are expected to reach $2.5 trillion in 2024, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3%, according to a Forrester study. The survey also finds that Southeast Asian consumers alone account for 50% of all worldwide internet sales, with that percentage rising to 64% by 2024. There is no shortage of merchants and companies trying to enter the digital arena given the enormous possibility.
It only takes a few clicks to launch your own online selling business today. It would be incorrect to claim that it is without issues, though. Given the complexity of the Southeast Asian market and the disjointed network, it is already complicated and disorganized stuff. Therefore, if you are just starting off, you need to carefully plan out the first steps. It will be quite difficult to build up a successful online business without adequate study, planning, and strategy.
Here is a comprehensive guide to assist you if you have made the decision to launch your business in the eCommerce sector of Thailand.
Plan to Start Online Store in Thailand
Your plan to start an online store in Thailand must be able to answer the following questions:
Never worry if you are not pretty clear with the answers. Keep on scrolling and reading this article, and be assured, that you will find answers to all your questions!
What to Sell?
Defining your offer is the first and most crucial step if you aren’t already selling offline. Growing opportunities always result in a fierce rivalry. It’s crucial that you take the time to research the best things to sell if you want to succeed. Remember that your choice of product will have an effect on a variety of other business-related factors, including production, inventory storage, and delivery procedures.
Find out which are the best-selling products in Southeast Asia based on the product categories you choose, the area you wish to serve, and the purchasing habits of potential clients.
Start with your ongoing offer if you are currently a seller. You must make sure you have a working plan to smooth out the bugs when trying to take your current business online if you intend to start from scratch.
How to Sell?
Analyze the Competition
Understanding the situation of the market should be your next priority once you’ve decided what to sell. This entails learning in-depth information about your competitors and what they have to offer.
Make a list of all groups, businesses, and even individuals selling comparable products. Include some key details like your sales purpose, tagline, strengths, and shortcomings.
You may start developing original propositions to set your company apart from the competition once you have a good understanding of your rivals.
Identify your Customers
Your target market’s preferences, needs, and issues should be well-known to you if you want your online business to succeed.
So, you can leverage psychographic and demographic data from similar market categories to increase the accuracy of your target audience data. Using the following diagram as a guide, the following information will be included.
You may obtain a better understanding of what your clients genuinely want from you based on the facts above. Since buyer personas are constantly changing as a result of the addition of new customers or the behavior of your existing consumers as a result of their most recent demands and interests, this should always be a recurring exercise. Therefore, be sure you value your clients since they will value your product or service.
Ensure Customer Satisfaction
Keep in mind that success requires more than just collecting orders. Instead, concentrate on the common issues that your customers face and try to help them by offering your products as a solution.
Make certain that your product can be shipped and delivered on time. Your operations and commercial expenses will go up if you choose anything that is particularly large, fragile, and quickly perishable.
Make your investigation and find the most typical problems that your consumers must be experiencing. then come up with a creative solution or try to make the current ones better. Once you begin receiving orders, you must watch out that you don’t postpone or mix up the orders. Therefore, rather than handling everything on your own, you might wish to collaborate with third-party logistics and fulfillment partners. This will increase your efficiency in what you enjoy doing most and let you concentrate more on your items, promotions, and sales (sell online).
In addition to all of this, decide exactly where you will be buying your items from if you do not want to build up your own production facility.
Plan Attractive Pricing & Promotion Strategy
You need to start creating a quick checklist of the things you need to do first after deciding on the products you will offer.
- Choose the most effective top online selling channels.
- Formulate a pricing plan.
- Prepare a plan for your online marketing.
- Create promotions and rewards programs to motivate customers.
Where to Buy from?
The supplier you select will have a significant impact on your business’s operating costs. Therefore, choosing a reliable supplier before shopping online is a wise move. When choosing your supplier, take into account the manufacturing prices, delivery costs, and profit margin.
The three main methods for getting goods are as follows:
Therefore, it’s critical to comprehend how each of these sources will be advantageous in order to choose the option that is best for your company. One approach may be better suited for your company than the others depending on the characteristics of your product, the market you serve, and consumer desire.
Sourcing Products from Manufacturers
You can procure products from manufacturers if you wish to create your own products. This will help you gain an advantage over the competition. Additionally, you will have complete control of your pricing policy.
Merits:
- You have more control over the branding and quality of the product.
- The cost per unit is substantially lower.
- Purchase goods at a discount and increase your profit when you sell them.
- Fast delivery because supplies are brought from factories directly.
Demerits:
- High investment because creating your own products and handling inventory will cost a lot of money.
- Investing a lot of effort in product research, planning, designing, developing, and testing can ultimately result in a launch that takes longer.
Risks:
- The biggest risk is buying excessively large quantities of goods because most manufacturers only sell in minimum order quantities (MOQ).
- When buying from manufacturers in other countries, you need to watch out for things like shipping defects, transportation fraud, and other issues.
TIPS: Select a manufacturer from abroad, particularly one in China, Taiwan, or India if you can, as their labor costs are lower and several trade agreements within ASEAN favor ethical business practices.
Sourcing Products from Wholesalers
A fantastic option for sourcing is through a wholesaler, who purchases items in bulk from manufacturers and distributes them. This will be a great option if you desire a quick go-to-market approach and want to market various product categories.
Merits:
- Small businesses are able to engage with wholesalers.
- As they market well-known products, they can aid in positioning your sales efforts.
- Reduce the danger involved with buying inventory.
- Once your relationships are solid, they give you a consistent and long-term source of goods.
Demerits:
- Different supply partners are challenging to manage
- Intensive price monitoring that forbids you from selling a product for less than the designated price range
- Divergent requirements for suppliers
Risks:
- The unpredictability of demand is the main danger of purchasing from a wholesaler.
- Given that there are numerous stores selling the same brand/same goods, it is challenging to distinguish them apart.
TIPS: In order to resell the products at a higher price and generate more income, bargain with the wholesaler.
Sourcing Products from Dropshippers
A drop shipper is a company that purchases goods from one company and sells them on your internet store. In this case, you will be entirely reliant on a separate organization to carry out the orders that you receive from your clients. Manufacturing and dropshipping each offer advantages and disadvantages.
This will be a great option for you if you aim to minimize their initial costs and don’t worry as much about margins.
Merits:
- Less stressful because the drop shipper takes care of all the concerns about delivery and refunds.
- Low likelihood of financial loss.
- There is no possibility of stock-outs or production losses.
- Low operating expenses.
Demerits:
- Low-profit margins since the drop shipper must be paid heavily
- Lack of oversight over the things you sell under your brand name’s quality
- You have little control over the inventory, which could lead to inventory problems.
Risks:
- Extremely thin margins and intense competition
- It can be challenging to invest in marketing campaigns or find new customers.
TIPS: If you have a relatively unique product in mind that niche customers prefer, go with a drop-shipper. If you apply this strategy to competitive items, your drop-shipping surcharges will go up.
Where to Sell?
As was mentioned, eCommerce gives you the freedom to use your creativity to successfully operate your firm. The right platform must be chosen from among the many advantageous ones available if you want to reach your intended target audience.
The two best-known platforms for selling goods online are as follows:
eCommerce Marketplace to start Online Store in Thailand
If you’re relatively new to the industry, the eCommerce marketplaces are the simplest locations to start. With these online marketplaces, you may register as a seller and start selling your goods right away. You must include some fundamental information for that, such as your bank account information, address, address verification, and VAT registration number.
These websites have relatively minimal operating costs, which greatly increases your savings. These currently receive millions of daily visitors, therefore your fear about potential customer attacks is gone. Additionally, the marketplace team is responsible for site maintenance, so downtime is never a concern.
Setup a Web Store to start Online Store in Thailand
The setup of your store with an eCommerce store-building platform is another quick and easy option to get it online. You can create your own web store using a variety of popular and technologically sophisticated alternatives. They assist you in reaching potential customers from all around the world by using their own server for this.
All you have to do to get started selling is sign up for one of these platforms, choose the package that best suits your brand, products, and budget, and upload your product catalog.
But in order to compete with the bigger competitors, establishing your own web store implies you’ll need to do a lot of marketing and promotion.
As an online vendor, both options—marketplaces and web stores—are excellent for producing long-term profits.
The two most crucial choices you must make from this checklist are selecting the best sales channels and deciding how you will manage them. For improved performance, many organizations opt to use an extensive order management system.
In comparison to vendors that offer on a single channel, multichannel sellers bring in 190% more money.
While selling on marketplaces allows you to make immediate sales, having your own website can help you steadily build your brand as you expand. Being present on marketplaces increases brand awareness, which increases direct traffic to your website.
You need to consider selling on various channels and raising your overall revenue if you want to achieve real success. Multichannel selling obviously requires a lot more work, but the rewards you will experience once you put it into practice are equally satisfying.
It is always better to manage your online selling through multi-channel selling software
You can handle all of your online operations on a single integrated platform thanks to multi-channel selling software programs. You can simply integrate them using multi-channel selling software rather than handling each channel separately. This helps you save time, effort, and money in addition to automating your entire selling process. You can manage a central inventory, process orders received through various channels on a single dashboard, and monitor important insights and analytics to determine the effectiveness of your operations thanks to its comprehensive control and visibility over all of your sales channels.
Legal Do’s & Dont’s to Start Online Store in Thailand
It’s simple to start an online business, but it takes a lot of effort to succeed. Along with establishing the business, you must also complete a number of legal requirements & paperwork:
Permits and Licenses:
You need legal permission documents for your business before you can start selling online. Once you have a company license, you can start selling online. You will require a seller’s permit, employer id number, and sales tax license in addition to business licenses. You need to make sure you are abiding by the law by periodically checking in with licensing bodies, however, it can differ depending on the region.
Shipping Restrictions:
If you intend to sell perishable items like fresh produce or items like cigarettes, alcohol, or perfume, you should be aware that shipping restrictions apply. Consequently, you would need some additional papers to deliver to the clients.
Intellectual Property Rights:
You will have a sizable database of product descriptions, photos, logos, and other information when you are selling various products from numerous brands. Additionally, there might be background music, clip art, audio files, brand videos, etc. Make sure you have the right to use them and, if necessary, that you have checked with the appropriate stakeholders for permission.
Every eCommerce actor is protected by three factors in order to promote ethical business practices. These are patents, trademarks, and copyrights.
Your creative content, product descriptions, pictures and photographs, digital information, sound effects or background music, graphics, and videos are all protected by copyright laws.
A trademark in Thailand is a word, phrase, symbol, and/or design that identifies and sets one party’s goods apart from those of others by indicating where they came from. this helps brands to stand out from the competition and protect their intellectual property.
A person or a company that develops novel, previously unrealized concepts that take the shape of innovations may file a patent. It is crucial to understand this distinction because it is one of the key elements that distinguish patents from trademarks and copyrights.
When transacting online, try to avoid any form of intellectual property difficulties. Allow no one to claim credit for your labor, and refrain from engaging in any form of self-stealing. Get advice about your property rights in advance to be safe.
Although it might seem difficult at first, if you follow the advice in this article, you can definitely streamline your move to the online world and increase your profits!
For complete legal and accounting support to start an online store in Thailand, feel free to write your requirement to us. Email us and book your round of free consultations at [email protected].
