Illustrations by Baqir Ismail
At the mention of Mid-Autumn Festival, mooncakes, lanterns and the legend of Chang Er come to mind for those who celebrate this wonderful festival. There is something for everyone, regardless of age. Everybody will always remember the times they spent walking around the Chinatown Mid-Autumn Festival Bazaar, looking at the wonderful decorative lights that have been put up. The bustling crowds and mooncake sellers yelling out their discounted prices for festival related knick knacks and offering tasting samples to passers-by.
Since Covid-19 struck, gatherings and large-scale events have come to a halt as part of government initiatives to minimise the spread of the virus. This entailed changing the ways of reaching consumers for mooncake sellers. Fortunately, with the help of technology, mooncake fairs have gone virtual and established an online presence. We can now easily purchase mooncakes from retailers’ online shops, estate group buys or even mega shopping sites like Shopee and Lazada. A key advantage of E-commerce is the ability to browse and purchase while nestled in the comfort of our homes! This means that there isn’t a need for us to worry about being in large crowds and risk catching the virus while shopping for mooncakes at a physical fair.
Large Mid-Autumn Festival fairs like Sinpopo, Takashimaya and Tangs started organising virtual fairs, including perks like free delivery and discount codes to boost bulk orders and sales. Many brands also took advantage of this opportunity to sell their own mooncakes at these virtual fairs. Capitol-Singapore and Chimes have also collaborated for their Mid-Autumn Festival Fair where they are selling both traditional and novelty mooncakes.
Illustrations by Baqir Ismail
For brands who are not involved in such fairs, they have also jumped on the digital bandwagon and started selling their products on their own websites, with both delivery and self pick up options, to ensure that they are not being left behind by the rest of the population as we progress into a more digitised lifestyle.
A notable example would be Shevron, a business that sells festive products, whom we helped to digitally transform during this Chinese New Year. Shevron used to sell their products by setting up booths at Chinese New Year fairs. Due to Covid-19 restrictions, they had to come up with a new way to sell their products and quickly build their online presence to capture their audience online. Hence, they partnered up with us to set up an e-commerce store and we ensured a seamless and pleasing digital shopping experience for both them and their consumers. Thanks to the Ecommerce platform, Shevron had a 1-2% increase in sales during the festive period as compared to if they had opened a booth at the fair, keeping in mind that without the website, Shevron could have lost 100% of its sales due to the lack of physical fairs and foot traffic.
While some companies struggled to do so, you can ensure that your digital transformation journey is kept smooth by finding the right partner. Interested in onboarding a project with us? Let’s connect! https://www.2359.co/contact
2359 Media is Asia’s leading digital consultancy tech firm with a mission to create a positive impact on the way people live and work through brilliant design and innovation. We are a collective of motley individuals with diverse expertise and passions, underscored by the same values and aspirations of solving problems with groundbreaking technology. We want to transform tomorrow together, impacting the world one innovation at a time.
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