Mayor Of Solo Gibran Inaugurates Shopee Export UMKM Campus, To Hit Chinese Products?

The e-commerce company Shopee Indonesia together with the Mayor of Surakarta Gibran Rakabuming inaugurated the opening of the 'Shopee Export UMKM Campus' in Surakarta, Solo, Wednesday 19 May. (Photo: Doc. Antara)

JAKARTA - The e-commerce company Shopee Indonesia together with the Mayor of Surakarta Gibran Rakabuming inaugurated the Shopee Export UMKM Campus, which is a continuation of a strategic collaboration to prepare the Surakarta UMKM Go Export to create 10,000 new exporters from Surakarta.

"We welcome the opening of the Surakarta Export UMKM Campus which was initiated by Shopee as a further step to embrace even more business people from Surakarta to show off in the global market in the future," said Gibran in an official statement, quoted from Antara, Wednesday, May 19.

Gibran hopes that with easier access to learning and mentoring, more and more Surakarta MSMEs will improve quality and demonstrate the quality of authentic Surakarta goods that are competitive.

Located in Banjarsari near Solo Balapan Station, Surakarta, the three-story building marks Shopee's long-term commitment to realize 10,000 exporters from Surakarta by the end of this year.

Meanwhile, the Director of Shopee Indonesia Handhika Jahja said that the Shopee Export UMKM Campus is the first step to make Surakarta City the first model for export education for MSMEs.

"By prioritizing our five main focuses to prepare MSMEs to go global, namely sustainable education, distribution of funding, online marketing, payment, and logistics systems, as well as exports, we hope that the development of capacity and production quality of Surakarta MSMEs can be more focused," he said.

Emphasizing the importance of upstream to downstream assistance for the Shopee Export UMKM Campus to accommodate all the business needs of MSMEs, including MSME education. UMKM players in Surakarta can immediately come and register for training. Shopee compiles a curriculum tailored to the needs of sellers. The curriculum includes nine modules with different themes.

The theme is Shopee Creation & Arrangement, Order Delivery and Order Processing, Promotion Feature Settings, Understanding Store Management, Getting to Know Shopee's Programs and Introduction to Shopee Exports, Understanding Seller Center and Further Optimizing Store Management, Increasing Store Traffic with Shopee Ads, Maximizing Traffic through Shopee Feed & Shopee Live and Preparing for Export.

To that end, Shopee trainers and a dedicated Customer Service team were presented. Shopee Trainers are intended to be Shopee's extensions for education and to provide advice for MSMEs to improve their business performance.

Various facilities

Apart from that, various other facilities are provided, such as shop building assistance facilities for MSMEs that have not been registered with Shopee, including creating Shopee accounts, taking photos and uploading products, as well as registration for Free Shipping services.

All available facilities can be used by MSME players for free at the Shopee Export UMKM Campus.

Then, the educational facilities are in the form of a training room with a capacity of 30 people, with a complete upstream to the downstream educational program from how to create & manage stores, promotion features & store management, how to increase traffic to preparation for export.

The Education Center contains information on how to set up and organize a shop and Shopee's promotional features with laptops and cellphones that visitors can use to try out the seller center features and the Shopee application.

Then, the logistics management facility is a warehouse system simulation place with various equipment that can be found in online store inventory systems such as shelves, packaging equipment, barcode scanners, and thermal printers.

There are also marketing facilities which are photo studios, live streaming rooms complete with backdrops, lighting systems, tripods, and microphones that can be used directly by MSMEs. Then, the export facility, namely the export center, contains information and guidelines for export preparation as well as an exhibition corner for various export products from Solo.

Finally, the meeting room facilities contain 4 rooms that can be used by MSME players and Shopee Trainers for individual training and mentoring. The Shopee Export UMKM Campus Facility can be used free of charge for MSME players, especially in the city of Surakarta.

It is recorded that around 40,000 MSMEs in Surakarta are registered at Shopee and 5,000 of them have active export stores. This collaboration with the Surakarta City Government is in line with other strategic steps that Shopee has taken to improve the quality of MSMEs.

Today, Shopee is recording its success in the export program with a 6-fold increase in daily transactions in half a year (June 2020-January 2021).

In February 2021, as many as 1.5 million products from local traders were successfully exported to Malaysia, Singapore, and the Philippines. The Shopee Export Program continues to be developed to reach new exports, not only in Southeast Asia such as Thailand and Vietnam which have been running since March but also to South America, namely Brazil.

Shopee Indonesia is also collaborating with the Export School to be able to print 500,000 new exporters by 2030.

This collaboration program between Shopee and the Export School is also supported by the Ministry of Trade and the Ministry of Cooperatives and Small and Medium Enterprises and has been started in early March 2021.