#SegudangAsa: Mom-and-Pop Stores Go Digital with GudangAda

Small neighborhood stores selling a variety of consumer goods are an integral part of our daily lives. We visit them from time to time because they’re convenient and just around the corner. These shopes are predominantly small to medium-sized and, more often than not, are family owned and operated. Nevertheless, they are big contributors to the country’s economy.

According to a report published in 2018 by Nielsen, Indonesia’s FMCG retail generated Rp 700 trillion in sales, with 72% coming from traditional retailers. Most of these mom-and-pop FMCG retailers run their business solely from their brick and mortar stores. But in this fast-paced digital era, even small retail businesses such as neighborhood stores need to embrace digital transformation. GudangAda, Indonesia’s largest and fastest-growing B2B FMCG marketplace, is enabling and empowering Indonesian small retailers to digitize their business.

To date, more than 500,000 retailers and wholesalers from all over Indonesia have used GudangAda’s online platform to find suppliers and buyers of FMCG products. On Wednesday (08/18/21), a number of FMCG suppliers and retailers gathered in a virtual event hosted by GudangAda to talk about the merits of going digital. In the first event of a four-part series called #SegudangAsa (“a Warehouse of Hope”), owners of small neighborhood shops from many different regions in Indonesia learned about the benefits of using GudangAda platform to digitize their business.

Faster, cheaper, smarter, and bigger

GudangAda Founder and CEO Stevensang explained that it is GudangAda’s mission to empower Indonesian micro, small, and medium-sized businesses through digitalization. The GudangAda mobile app offers an integrated point-of-sales solution for the FMCG retail industry. It also lets its users manage their transactions and track deliveries.

Stevensang said that by using GudangAda’s online platform, an FMCG retailer or supplier will be able to sell their products faster, thus optimizing their working capital. Another benefit that GudangAda offers is that it helps businesses reduce operational costs by connecting manufacturers, distributors, and retailers in one platform. Businesses use the GudangAda platform to help them handle all aspects of business-to-business sales, down to deliveries using GudangAda’s logistic services. “This means you may no longer need to hire a salesman for your store,” Stevensang told retailers in the event.

GudangAda also offers a smarter way to do business because by using GudangAda’s mobile app, retailers and wholesalers alike can get an insight of which items they are selling that sell the most. By and large, GudangAda helps its users grow bigger as it connects more and more retailers with wholesalers, thus increasing traffic and transactions in the platform while ensuring that prices remain competitive.

Stevensang also informed traditional retail sellers attending the virtual get-together about GudangAda’s plan to complete its ecosystem with financial services, providing a way for neighborhood stores on its platform to finance working capital.

In the #SegudangAsa event, the mom-and-pop store owners also expressed their hope for the future of their businesses with GudangAda. Some others said they hoped that by digitizing their business with GudangAda they would be able to expand their business. Bahaki, a BOPP tape seller, also expressed his gratitude for GudangAda. “I never thought I would be able to sell my products in Papua,” he said. The owner of Nan Jaya store called GudangAda “the most useful B2B platform” and Febriyani, another shop owner, said she was thankful to GudangAda for helping her “source [products] for my shop in Timika, Papua”.