Taiwan’s e-commerce companies have announced their second quarter results this year. The ongoing impact of the Russia-Ukraine war coupled with the continued impact of the pandemic has resulted in the global inflation hitting a 40-year high so far this year, causing soaring prices that have affected consumption. Those affected include global large-scale e-commerce Amazon, Shopee, and Chinese e-commerce Alibaba and JD.com, which all suffered losses in the first half of the year. The stock price of SEA, the parent company of Shopee, has fallen from a high of $367 in December 2021 to the current $76. With most of the major domestic and overseas e-commerce companies experiencing a decline in the first half of the year, ETMall still managed to achieve an EPS of NT$8.5, even surpassing MOMO’s EPS of NT$7.59 in the first half of the year for the first time, and leaped impressively to first place as the most profitable domestic e-commerce company. The key to this achievement was the successful strategic adjustment by Chairman Gary Wang of ETMall! First, the development of self-operated products since 2017, which became the main profit earners; second, the good use of big data for business operations to achieve precise marketing and better corporate efficiency. 

   Even under global inflationary pressures in the first half of the year, ETMall continued to deliver excellent performance in both revenue and profitability. In an overview of Taiwan’s domestic e-commerce, in the first half of this year, MOMO remained in first place with a revenue of NT$48.076 billion, followed by PCHome’s revenue of NT$22.889 billion, while the consolidated revenue of ETMall was NT$13.955 billion in the first half of the year. Although it ranked third among domestic e-commerce companies, however, it is worth noting that the profit and EPS of ETMall have already overtaken MOMO in the second quarter, and is far ahead of PCHome and Kuobrothers Corp, which had already shown EPS losses in the first quarter of this year. It even resulted in an human resource incident that saw the resignation of its CEO. In terms of net profit margin, ETMall’s 6.21% in the first half of the year was also higher than MOMO’s 3.44%, making it the most profitable e-commerce company in Taiwan. 

   The significant growth in profitability of ETMall is attributed to the product strategy of “full development of self-operated brands,”which was first implemented five years ago. Furthermore, the ratio of self-operated products to revenue reached 35% in 2021, which also accounted for 65% of the profit, the highest ratio among Taiwan’s integrated e-commerce platforms. After the outbreak of the pandemic last year, the traditional retail industry was greatly affected, and Chairman Gary Wang personally took the helm of the company. ETMall actively worked with established brands to launch a variety of co-branded products. The top 10 best-selling self-branded products include: VIVA nut products, CooKing kits, Ayi Baoyu beef noodles, Anlene milk powder, and Regent beef noodles. A whopping 880,000 CooKing kits have been sold since they hit the market in May last year, resulting in a record sales of $55 million. 

   The second key to ETMall maintaining the growth momentum and achieving record-high revenues was the good use of industry-leading “big data”for customer management. With the application of big data and analysis of members’ consumption behavior, ETMall can target the consumer groups of specific products and design different marketing strategies to attract members to make successful purchases and achieve precise marketing, enabling the conversion rate of new customers to reach over 5%. 

   Looking ahead to the second half of the year, ETMall is cautiously responding to the changes in the economic environment, and Chairman Gary Wang has made drastic adjustments to the strategy in response. Internally, ETMall has made the adjustment for centralized purchasing and established the “Group Purchasing and Marketing Division”under the Chairman’s personal leadership to increase cross-channel sales of products to boost sales. Externally, it is accelerating the OMO online to offline customer guidance model, and creating a new Eastern Lifestyle Circle economy through more extensive cross-industry alliances. First, ETtoday Pets physical store and Family Mart will collaborate to create the first pet store and convenience store complex in Taiwan. Located at the headquarters in Zhonghe, the “Eastern Sky Plaza”will combine services such as Eastern Natural Beauty, ETwarm, and Mama Bear Shopping pickup point, as well as a food court to create maximum traffic flow and provide consumers with a better service experience through virtual reality integration (OMO). The company is committed to building a lifestyle ecosystem of happiness filled with everything that is “tasty, beautiful, healthy, and lifestyle-oriented.”