Online Asian Grocery Market Weee! Credits Customer-Centric Approach for Sharp Rise in Busines10/4/2024 Joy Ma (Editor's note: Joy Ma is a high school student from the Class of 2025 at The Torrey Pines High School. Joy is a recipient of 2024 API Internship in Journalism. ) SAN DIEGO — The online Asian grocery market Weee! has witnessed significant proliferation since its founding in 2015. The Fremont, Calif.-based startup is now valued at $4.1 billion. Founded by CEO Larry Liu, Weee! started as a group-buying company on the Chinese instant messaging app WeChat. According to Executive Associate Yiyi Liu (no relation to Larry), the company “was inspired by a $10,000 collective purchase of Pacific cod fish by a WeChat group.” In 2017, recognizing the limitations of the group-buying model, Larry Liu pivoted Weee! to a direct-to-consumer grocery delivery service. “The company aims to provide the most convenient access to Asian groceries so that its consumers can cherish foods easily,” Yiyi Liu said.
Initially catering to ethnically Chinese consumers, Weee! expanded its reach during the Covid-19 pandemic and now bills itself as the largest online Asian supermarket in the United States, serving a diverse range of Asian American communities. The company credits the pandemic as playing a significant factor in its sharp increase in customers, as people stayed home and turned to grocery delivery services. Total online grocery sales shot up from $62 billion in 2019 to $96 billion in 2020, according to the Food and Drug Administration. “During the pandemic, we’ve seen this acceleration of online companies increase dramatically because, for at least a year or more, people had no other shopping choices,” said On Amir, professor of marketing and faculty co-director of the Sullivan Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of California, San Diego. Weee! sets itself apart from other online grocery delivery services by offering six different ethnic shops and six languages to serve multi-ethnic neighborhoods while “helping to make Asian groceries, ingredients and food accessible to Asians all around the U.S.,” Yiyi Liu said. Unique ethnic items from Weee!’s inventory include steamed egg custard buns, soybean rolls, Liuzhou snail rice noodles and tapioca pearls, to name a few. “My family orders from Weee! almost every week. I can tell that my mom really loves ordering from them because they have snacks and foods that we don’t see at your local grocery stores,” said Charlize Wang, a 15-year-old Chinese immigrant who has lived in San Diego for seven years. According to Wang, her family’s most regularly-purchased food item from Weee!’s inventory is fresh bamboo shoots. “Digital stores have to work quite hard to create a brand or an offering that is differentiated,” Amir noted, referring to the competition between different online stores. According to Yiyi Liu, customer feedback has played a crucial role in shaping Weee!’s business strategies. For instance, an increasing demand for ice cream in early 2024 drove the company to provide optimal delivery conditions. “Our supply chain team dedicated significant time and effort to ensure that the brick-hard ice cream arrived in optimal condition for customers,” Yiyi Liu said. “Being a company committed to customer-centricity means a lot to us.” Weee! hopes to maintain its competitiveness in a saturated e-commerce market by putting the needs of its customers first. “As long as we listen to our customers and do what is best for them, we are confident that we will have good footing in the industry,” Yiyi Liu said.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |