Hong Kong tech company PCCW is about to launch a B2C e-commerce platform, Habbitzz.
Kicking off on March 6, it will feature 15,000 SKUs from more than 1000 international brands covering alcohol, babycare, electronics, fashion and beauty, sports and lifestyle, and travel, reports Campaign.
“Think of us as the Amazon of Hong Kong, but remove all the low-end products,” says Habbitzz CEO Alex Bono, who is also senior VP of e-commerce for PCCW solutions, the IT and outsourcing services division of the conglomerate.
PCCW has been preparing the venture for nine months, and says it came up with the name Habbitzz because it wants Hong Kong consumers to move beyond their more traditional habits of shopping.
Bono says the goal is to have 100,000 products and services by this time next year, with a broader O2O strategy in the works by 2019 or 2020.
Alongside the main business of Habbitzz Retail – the webstore reselling products from both mainstream and niche merchants – are two other business lines: Habbitzz Express (warehouse and logistics support) and Habbitzz Services (CRM, data analytics and payment gateway technology).
“At speed”
Bono says PCCW is letting Habbitzz have “more freedom to execute at speed”.
“One year in, this startup will be like five years in a corporation like PCCW that is accustomed to big, finalised products,” he says.
PCCW had previously tried to grow e-commerce “in a corporate way” with its e-commerce-as-a-service package. In November 2015, PCCW Solutions also ventured into e-commerce logistics. With LTF Asia, it jointly launched a network of automated lockers, House of Parcels, to store online orders for customer pick-up.
For Habbitzz, Bono has hired almost 100 employees based in Hong Kong and the Philippines including data scientists, software engineers, merchandisers, product managers, search-engine technologists and design specialists.
Habbitzz’s main local rival, HKTVMall, launched in 2015 and today handles 7600 daily orders, taking in an average of HK$537 an order from 180,000 products out of 2700 brands.
“There will be categories in which Habbitzz will overlap with HKTVMall, but we aim for premium positioning,” says Bono. “We will definitely not hold any cheap brands.”
He says Habbitzz is aiming for same-day or even a four-hour delivery window.
