We were told that Malaysian manufacturers now have a bright future to penatrade into the lucrative China market in the Digital Free Trade Zone.

But just based for few logical questions.
1) How does a new Malaysian seller going to compete with the tens of thousands if not millions of reputable sellers in Taobao/ TianMao who already carrying thousands of positive reviews?
2) How does a Malaysian SME manufacturer beat the Chinese Manufacturers who produce goods with a larger and thus much efficient scale on PRICING? Furthermore, shipping from Malaysia involves additional cost.

Is it true so?

It can still be very true for producers who sell this:



Or this:


Both agricultural products above cannot be produced in China and thus Malaysian sellers can easily find its niche in the China mass market, in fact many already doing that. But how about other SMEs?

Soon, online buyers shall be able to get such great deal from Taobao on Lazada which was recently acquired by Alibaba with $USD1B, the group's biggest offshore investment so far.


And the locals will have big problem to attract buyers with this prices and forced to slash margin significantly, both online and retail seller. The latter is much worse because needs to pay heavy rental to the malls...


As a Digital Marketing Consultant, me and my clients have been receiving spam mails as such. We are being told by those desperate China sellers that they use VPN rerouting to access Google and found us...
It shows that China local market is close to saturation and many players are eagerly looking to opportunity to export oversea. Did I mention Alibaba's investors are as eager for growth for the biggest offshore investment the group made?

So how to stop China goods from flooding into Malaysia within the World's First Digital Free Trade Zone?

We cant.

The only thing we can do now is to warn our fellow SMEs, not being too naive about selling into China market and most importantly increase their businesses, brand's digital foot print on the internet before it's too late. Well, it could be already too late now if they don't even have a website, but what businesses need today is an eCommerce and SEO friendly website, couple with creative marketing strategy to build brands value and share them across the digital dimension effectively. If things are done correctly, with a little luck, businesses can still prosper.

Thank you for reading till this line, should you a business owner who is puzzling around, please check out my site at Digital Marketing Consultant Malaysia Strikemygoal.com or simply fill up Strikemygoal.com contact form and we shall get back to you to discuss more in details.

See ya!

This post has been edited by bryantpl2: Jun 12 2018, 01:29 PM

Even Big brand as NESTLE has made the move to cope with the digital trendd, if our local SMEs are still sitting back doing nothing while the China goods are queuing up to enter into Malaysia through the World's 1st Digital Free Trade Zone Express Bus, many will soon join the Nokia or even Kodak club...

A good initiative from the government indeed, hope this program will build a healthy digital ecosystem in the region soon and everyone can benefit from it. #youcanduit

Let's listen to wat Jack Ma has to say and warn about Ecommerce to the businessman in local and international conference.
Anyway it's in Chinese...

DFTZ is very official now, fasten your seat belt and get ready for more "excitement" ahead.

Interesting seminar to learn about the views of the industry leaders about DFTZ

Some recordings from the seminar. Get the important insignts there.

The 2nd largest eCommerce player in China is transforming Thailand to its SEA regional hub. So our fellow manufacturers and retailers now have to face 2 main challenges:

1) DFTZ's hub by Alibaba at our backyard in Shah Alam
2) JD.com's hub just right above us in Thailand.

Good luck!

are you from WILD DIGITAL?

No, I'm not from WILD DIGITAL, but I can get pretty wild too.

hahaha, are you in the digital marketing field or related?

Yes, i'm. Started talking to fellow SMEs about few months ago.

I see, because I am searching digital marketing jobs but my background was design, i find it difficult to get employ

I see two reasons behind your problem. First of all, the market in MY and regional is getting bad for the last 12 months or so, so finding a job in overall is more challenging. Secondly, as stressed in this post many SME still don't have fate in Digital Marketing therefore they won't want to invest on it.
Perhaps you can try getting some freelance work to get started. Here is what u can do, sign up an account with Fiverr and start taking small projects. Good luck!

This post has been edited by bryantpl2: Jun 20 2017, 01:09 PM

ya some interviewers told me because i dont have experience (I have few years working experience in design, sales & marketing)

so they find it hard to consider me even i lower down my expected salary range same as fresh grad.

thanks for the website, i know another which is Upwork, but they want to see someone who has experience when assigned project too...


but what are the reasons the market in MY and regional is getting bad for the last 12 months ?



This post has been edited by daimon: Jun 20 2017, 08:40 PM

Few reasons behind this worsening economy...for MY the GST is sucking away bilions from the market, plus low oil prices 20% of the country's GDP is contributed by the oil&gas sector.

From macro/ global perspective. China's growth is slowing down, and the Brexit has created a lot of uncertainties...

This post has been edited by bryantpl2: Jun 21 2017, 01:18 AM

I see.. Thanks for your insightful information

guess I still need to wait my luck to come for someone to hire me!

Another anticipated blockbuster development in the eCommerce segment Amazon is coming to SEA through Singapore

So now what do our manufacturers and retailers have to face?
1) Alibaba at the backyard (DFTZ hub at Selangor)
2) JD.com at the North(Bangkok, Thailand) and
3) Amazon at the South (Singapore).

SEA will be so crowded and interesting to see if the new intruder: Tencent (Wechat) will start selling something soon.

This post has been edited by bryantpl2: Jul 26 2017, 04:46 PM

Another huge news of Google's launching SME Project in Singapore

Why Singapore? Of course Singapore with its reputation as the best logistic hub in the region and the arrival of the American brother: Amazon.
Malaysia of course won't loose out easily as we have the Taukeh China: Alibaba dan WeChat.

Trade War between the super powers will not happen domestically in China or US but mostly here in SEA.
Well, consumer gets the most gain while biz owners are expected to suffer more just like the taxi driver facing challenges from Uber(US) and Grab(China). The gain by consumer would be deemed short term, imagine more SME loosing competitiveness and jobs started to vanish and more social problems will arise.

Both workers and biz owners need to be aware of this and jump out of the comfort zone to accept and learn the new stuffs. Action needs to be taken to adapt change in order to minimize the impact otherwise it will be very jialat (miserable).

Marketers or even biz owners tend to be overwhelmed by the "tricks" digital marketing can play today. Certain things may not be relevant anymore when ppl is getting "smarter" on the internet or worse, becoming "less smart" surrounded by manipulated news/ content.

Confronting the Real Challenges in Today's Digital Marketing

This post has been edited by bryantpl2: Aug 10 2017, 03:30 PM