BUYanihan's Lucky 7 winners of gift certs

November 26th, 2010 | Author: Ida

Seven participants in the just held two-day e-Commerce Summit 2010 won gift certificates from BUYanihan.com in a raffle draw held on the last day of the summit.

 

They were:
· Reggie Bundang of regaloservice.com (a gift service portal)
· Alvin Gale Tan of SVI Software Services (e-services outsourcing provider)
·  Micci Lopez of cashsense (facilitator of cash-based transactions online and offline)
·  Fritzie Ann Revilla of 701 Search Inc. (online classified ads service)
·  Bernardo Mitra (chairman of many companies, among them ChilLine Attitude Corporation which develops destinations that cater to a high-end client base)
· Alexandra Lopez of Ayannah (provider of solutions that enable secure transactions over online and mobile communication networks)
· Mel Co of Global Competitiveness (business and training consultancy)

Each won P300 worth of GCs of Sodexo, Krispy Kreme and Red Mango that BUYanihan.com raffled off after the announcement of the category winners in the 4th DigitalFilipino SPI top 100 Web Awards.

Some of them are members of the DigitalFilipino.com Club founded in 2003 by Janette Toral who is acknowledged as the ‘Mother of  the e-Commerce Law (RA8792)’.  The Club is composed of more than 100 members who meet regularly to share their experiences on e-commerce, social media, SEO marketing, blogging and e-lancing (freelancing over the Internet).

BUYanihan.com founder Eddie Lee was a speaker on the first day where he discussed the growth potential in the Philippines of group buying websites by harnessing the Filipinos’  collective bargaining power and their innate social networking skills.

By 2012, Eddie foresees this market to grow to P9 billion with about 20 strong players each featuring 3,000 discount deals a year.

For a group buying site to successfully promote and sell 3,000 deals, he said the company needs to have 300 staff to handle 1-million transactions a year and have the infrastructure to send out one (1) billion emails to its customers (database) who have a spending power of P300 per month.

Launched in August 2 this year, BUYanihan.com is the Philippines’ first group buying site. Since then, the site has featured 20 deals on food and drinks, beauty and skin care, themed parks, travel, hotel, kiddies fun and fun run.

Posted in Buyanihan Always!

Common-sense e-commerce tips from a mum-trepreneur

Useful lessons learned from a thriving SME entrepreneur who put up a full-service gift shop on the Internet in 2006 and is now blazing a trail.

Reggie Bundang of regaloservice.com was one of the speakers at the e-Commerce Summit 2009 organized by digitalfilipino.com, held last November 12 and 13.


Reggie turned into a goldmine her familiarity with the public's buying and saving habits gained from her previous product management and business development experience with banks and telcos that required her to travel all over the country.

Going e-commerce was a good move because an internet enterprise meant flexibility (she can work from home) and did not require stiff capitalization (she had no millions).


Professionalism and a technology focus are essential when putting a business on the virtual world, she said. She plonked money (her first major outlay) on building a website hewed closely to the basic functions of what it should be and do - - simple to understand and navigate, and making it easy for the public to contact them. Sourcing merchant partners, couriers and secure payment gateways came next. She summed up the whole experience as challenging but productive lessons on starting an e-commerce store.


Three years ago, regaloservice.com had five merchant partners. That has now expanded to 45 partners offering more than 300 product lines. Shoppers can order stuff not available on the online store. In 2007, it was voted best website in the gifts category by the DigitalFilipino Club Awards.


There are still hiccups like meeting delivery deadlines here and abroad. But Reggie's no-nonsense advice is honesty with customers, because it will put you in their higher esteem. Managing their merchandise inventory is a continuing aim-for-perfection process between her staff and their partners. "We continue to have great focus on professionalism and good customer service," she said.


Inspired by her success on the e-commerce platform, she will launch her second business (will be up by next month), a one-stop party food portal where busy professionals, companies, schools and OFWs can order food for their parties.


To quote her, 'I have reached the point of no return.'

'Blogging from Home', in a class all by itself

This book review is a year overdue.

Rereading my friend Janette Toral's book became urgent when I was invited by the info team of a local government official to comment on the value of blogging in keeping constituents up to date with community projects and motivating them, especially the young into becoming action-oriented.

Most of the members of the info team admitted their lack of knowledge of information sharing on the Internet, apart from some of them having Facebook accounts. My familiarity with web collaboration tools is only a notch higher than theirs and so seized the occasion to have another look at "Blogging from Home".

Rereading the book took on a deeper dimension. The mindmap, blog registration and set up, blog performance, links, keywords, podcasts, vlogs, blog ethics, RSS are neatly sectioned and explained in simple English that there is simply no way to get muddled in the 92-page instructional guide.

It made it easy for me to prepare my talking points and turning them into weighty ones.