There are many new and fun trendy products all over the world, and many famous stores have become must-visit places for traveling abroad! However, lining up for checkout, carrying the shopping items or even applying for tax returns are all tedious processes. Alion, a startup in the Startup Terrace Linkou, is seeing this business opportunity and has collaborated with the Japanese team to create the JaFun duty-free shopping platform. This innovative service upgrades the travel shopping experience.
Why choose the Japanese market? Shi-Wei Qiu, Co-Founder of Alion, emphasized that according to the analysis of the statistics from Japan Tourism Organization, Taiwanese tourists visiting Japan spent NT$ 168.1 billion in 2018. Shopping and tourism accounted for NT$ 56.4 billion, of which 4.72 billion were from tourists who had not yet arrived in Japan and the purchases were made online. Such big business opportunity in tourism shopping has become Alion's motivation to start a business, triggering the rise of JaFun duty-free shopping platform.
IoT+Online Duty-Free Upgrades Tourism Shopping Experience
Before starting his business, Shi-Wei Qiu worked as a tour guide for some time. His job was to bring Japanese tourists to Taiwan for sightseeing. He noticed that regardless of the type of travel, most tourists will bring their relatives and friends goods or souvenirs. Purchasing agents are very popular in Taiwan, not to mention for Japan, which is the place where people in Taiwan love to visit the most. Therefore, he and his team decided to build a purchasing agent platform. Different from other regular purchasing platform, the purchasing platform launched by Alion adopted IoT technology and online tax-return application, creating a one-stop overseas purchasing agent service.
The stores currently on the JaFun duty-free shopping platform include the top ten most popular products purchased by Taiwanese tourists in Japan. Customers do not need to visit the store and line up to purchase the product. The purchase and the checkout can be done directly on the platform. Alion also built its own logistics system to deliver goods to designated hotels or airports. Although most stores will provide this service, the JaFun platform provides a one-click online duty-free service, allowing it to become the only overseas shopping service platform that can provide one-stop online purchasing, logistics, and duty-free services.
Shi-Wei Qiu said that the online tax return is achieved mainly through smart lockers and APP. Customers first place an order from the APP and choose a pick-up location. Logistics personnel then deliver the items to the designated pick-up IoT locker. "Through the camera and scanning device in the IoT locker, data are obtained and uploaded to the database for identification", confirming the identity of the item owner.
Overseas Purchasing Market’s Favorite – No Matter How Big or Small, JaFun Platform Can Meet Your Demand
The JaFun duty-free shopping platform not only benefits the tourists in Japan, it also sees another big market – the overseas purchasing agent market. Overseas purchasing agent has always been an important shopping trend in Taiwan. According to the statistics of Ruten, there are nearly 7 billion business opportunities a year. Shi-Wei Qiu pointed out that for traditional purchasing agents, almost all of them have to rush their purchases during their stay in Japan. The rise of the platform made the work of purchasing agents easier. The purchasing agents only need to choose the items on the platform before visiting Japan. They can travel to Japan and play for a few days and then carried the purchased items back home. Since the platform charges service fees and logistics fees, it has great incentives and competitiveness for the purchasing agent market.
The staffs of the Alion's team mainly have background in cloud system development. The technologies involved include advertising management system, IoT refuge robot, ERP system, remote tool management system, hotel OTA management system, tourism hostel website, APP system development, etc. During the development of the JaFun duty-free shopping platform, the team undertook Japanese real estate website development project, Japanese shopping app, financial app, swimming training app, etc., and accumulated experience in large system construction and industrial ecology in Japan.
This year, the COVID-19 epidemic delayed the schedule for launching the duty-free platform. However, Alion’s core technology has made it the favorite platform for collaboration by several traveling website operators. Shi-Wei Qiu emphasized that technologies such as IoT smart lockers, identification technology and online payment can be directly connected to travel websites in a modular manner, assisting the website operators to complete their “last mile” in system upgrade and boosting up their revenue. However, just like choosing between OEM and brand in any business, Alion also hopes to develop its own brand and launch the JaFun duty-free shopping platform by the end of this year.
Shi-Wei Qiu spent four years in Japan to observe the Japanese culture in depth. He has negotiated with several major Japanese must-buy merchants, and coincidentally ushered in the business opportunity for Japan to announce a comprehensive electronic policy for tax exemption procedures this (2020) year, allowing the core technologies to be applied in the platform. Since the team of Alion was in both Taiwan and Japan, Alion decided to stationed in the Startup Terrace Linkou last year. The reason for the decision is because the location is geographically convenient, but most importantly, the legal and management courses, as well as other seminars and exchange activities offered by the Startup Terrace Linkou can serve as useful resources for startups.
Figure：Shi-Wei Qiu hopes to combine Taiwan’s technologies with Japanese resources to open business opportunities with overseas purchasing agent
Written/Photographed by: Startup Terrace Editorial team