A sophisticated e-commerce model attracts 8 major supermarkets

Honestbee, Asia’s leading online grocery and concierge service, where professional concierge shoppers handpick and deliver fresh groceries from top local stores,
has announced partnerships with eight well-known major supermarket partners in Hong Kong on June 20th.

Providing a turnkey solution for supermarkets to gain new customer bases and incremental revenue, Honestbee presents itself as an attractive solution to traditional supermarkets and boutique stores looking to grow their sales and customer base overnight.

Honestbee, a Singaporean tech startup founded in 2015 operating in eight major cities in Asia including Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo, Taipei, Bangkok, Manila, Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, is now extending its service to include Japanese lifestyle brand YATA Supermarket, local chain supermarket Taste, as well as U select which sells close to 600 products from the UK’s leading supermarket, TESCO.

Agreements with eight supermarkets including PARKnSHOP, Great Food Hall, Taste, Fusion, International (will launch in July), YATA Supermarket, U select and TESCO have allowed Honestbee to offer over 30,000 items to consumers in Hong Kong. The company continually innovates to improve the shopping varieties and delivery capabilities with the aim of delighting its customers, and building the largest and most convenient online grocery concierge service in Asia.

Apart from the technological expertise and efficient network, the valuable information and solutions honestbee offers partners has played no small part in attracting new stores. “It’s a turnkey e-commerce solution”, said Hong Kong country manager of honestbee, Derek Winder. “This means, if someone wants to launch an e-commerce platform, they can use honestbee to build their e-commerce store as well as handle the payments, professional customer service team and logistics. Plus, our system captures valuable information like the most popular products, customer frequency, product ordering information and out of stock circumstances. This consumer data is incredibly useful and can easily help our partners realize which items they should stock more of!”

With no upfront cost and a professional customer service team readily available to offer tailored solutions, honestbee’s e-commerce package presents an attractive offer to potential partners. Additionally, the company provides information not readily available to retailers in brick-and-mortar stores. This can include customer frequency, product ordering information, out of stock circumstances and the geographical location of orders. The ability to share which products are most popular during a certain time frame, for example, allows supermarkets to implement targeted marketing strategies.

Along with comparatively high rental costs in Hong Kong, honestbee provides the ideal e-commerce platform – a critical component for all the partners looking to boost both online and offline sales.

Since its launch, the company has successfully grown to become one of the most advanced players in the on-demand category, with 60% of customers making use of the service at least once a week and spending an average of HK$750 per visit. From the beginning, honestbee’s commitment has been to deliver a superior customer experience, become an invaluable partner for retailers, and give back to the community. Other than the major supermarkets mentioned above, honestbee partners with popular boutique stores in Hong Kong including Feather & Bone, The Butchers Club, Pet Line and Baby Central.

Thanks to the recognizable regional expansion and quality service, honestbee has just won the Wild Digital #BOOM Startup of the Year award on 24th May 2017, which recognizes startups that have demonstrated outstanding growth.