Running Retail & E-Commerce from Hong Kong with Jennifer Cheng

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Recording today’s podcast as I am packing up for my USA trip. I’ll be flying from Hong Kong over to San Francisco and taking a road trip around the country with my wife and friend Attila. anyone interested to check out the funny movie trailer I recorded, can do so on Socialagent.me/roadtrip!

Today we have Jennifer Cheng, an energetic, ambitious business woman who I have been fortunate to have known the years doing business in Hong Kong. I first met Jennifer while she was involved with building up the group buying explosion a few years ago. She has extensive experience in both online and offline e-commerce in Hong Kong and overseas, and today we are lucky enough to get her insights on leveraging both her retail shop in Kowloon and her online e-commerce store for her current venture Glam-It – enjoy!

Topics Covered in this Episode

• Intro Jennifer
• Dealing with e-commerce and group buying in Hong Kong with different cultures and currencies
• Group buying – payments online or offline?
• Glam-it’s strategy of from Clicks to bricks – and building a 360 experience
• Balance of western customers and local Hong Kong and Chinese consumers
• Merchant accounts in Hong Kong for her Glam-It! business
• The process of her BeeCrazy merger and IPO on the Australian stock exchange
• Dealing with a startup as it scales, and her firsthand experiences of this rapid scaling at BeeCrazy
• Future plans for her current venture, Glam-It! – to become the “smartphone for makeup” and an app store.
• Tips for “newbies” coming to Hong Kong and/or Asia to do business
• Contacting Jennifer – JennGlamCo twitter/facebook/instagram

People / Companies / Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• ABC = American Born Chinese
• rackspace rackspace.com.hk
• ubuyibuy – How ubuyibuy became the groupon.hk when groupon entered the Hong Kong market
• groupon Hong Kong groupon.hk
• beecrazy www.beecrazy.hk/en
• Harvey nichols harveynichols.com/
• Jenn’s interview series – http://www.scmp.com/article/1309268/leaning-interview-series-1-sarah-young-odonnell
• Socialagent.me/roadtrip

Images of The GlamPact product & The Retail Shop in Hong Kong

Episode Length: 27:37

So hope you guys enjoyed our interview with Jennifer! She is also doing a series on western entrepreneurs in China and her and I plan to do an interview for that.

The interesting point about doing business in Hong Kong is its density – with a population of about 7 million people, and such a thorough and extensive MTR (subway) system, consumers still prefer to going to the shops to look and buy the goods, paying on site. I believe this is why there is still a lack of Hong Kong based online merchant accounts and support systems for commerce and online businesses.

Again, that is part of the mission of Global From Asia – to make it more clear and transparent to run a global business from Hong Kong. Feedback and insights are appreciated.

Cheers
Mike

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