Zilingo, the Singapore-based fashion and lifestyle e-marketplace startup, is investing US$226 million in its quest to become a global player in the fashion supply chain to capitalise on the $3 trillion market.
The company recently received Series D funding with a valuation close to $1 billion, putting it on the verge of becoming a unicorn fashion startup.
"We will use the funds for more overseas expansion in the third quarter, especially in the US and Australia, as part of our global strategy to go beyond Southeast Asia," said Marita Abraham, chief of marketing.
The global fashion market is valued at $3 trillion, of which 46% is in Asia. Online fashion still has lots of opportunity, she said.
Zilingo is widening its online retail e-marketplace (B2C) to wholesale (B2B), focusing on a larger scale such as manufacturers, garment factories and distributors, bringing them on the B2B platform to connect across the entire fashion supply chain. The B2B site will run separately at Zilingoasiamall.com.
Ms Abraham said revenue on such a platform comes from sales commission fees and extra services such as digital marketing, product catalogues and loan services for merchants to source their products in advance, as well as credit terms for fashion manufacturing. These services could help small manufacturers and online merchants gain cost competitiveness while offering a greater variety of products to their customers.
Zilingo plans to invest in offline stores for consumers to try and buy products, the "omni-channel experience", by the end of this year, in Indonesia and Thailand.
"Thailand is our first market that we started over three years ago, and it's an important market in both retail and wholesale as it's a large base of fashion manufacturers," Ms Abraham said. The company plans to lure more small and medium-sized fashion entrepreneurs from Chatuchak Market and Talat Rot Fai to sell online and cross-border. Thailand is the No.2 market for Zilingo, after Indonesia.
In Thailand, Zilingo aims to increase its 1.3 million active customers to over 2 million users through aggressive marketing. The site has some 3,000 merchants, offering 100,000 items, with women's fashion the best-seller. The main buyers are 18-36 years old with a basket size of $50.
Zilingo has B2C and B2B sites in Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines. It will expand the B2B platform with suppliers in the US and Australia in the third quarter, apart from Vietnam, Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Hong Kong, India and South Korea.
