PETALING JAYA: The two sisters behind headscarf brand Heeladina have their logistics and courier service provider Ninja Van to thank for solving their logistics issues and helping them succeed in their business.
Puteri Nadjwa Dewi, 25, and Puteri Ameera, 28, said Heeladina’s biggest issue with its previous courier service provider was parcel damage and missing parcels.
“The (previous) courier company was ok if you have a small amount of orders. When you have a lot of orders, it’s difficult. The orders have to be done manually as they don’t have a website. Every day we need to call them to pick up parcels. Sometimes they don’t come and we need to drop off the parcels ourselves. Missing items were difficult to handle, there’s no person in charge and we have to call the customer service frequently,” Dewi told SunBiz.
The sisters then switched to Ninja Van and has remained its customer for over a year now. To run a business, Dewi looks for a courier service provider that offers convenience, is easily reachable and has a user-friendly system.
“Ninja Van solved our problems right away. They guided us in improving our services such as enabling faster delivery to customers, helping us to find a good website developer and we are able to expand our business to Singapore and Indonesia because Ninja Van also ships to these two countries,” Dewi said, adding that there will be an account manager from Ninja Van to handle the needs of Heeladina.
Heeladina sells headscarves in the Muslimah fashion industry through Twitter and Instagram, specialising in gift sets that can be customised based on customers’ budget. Dewi said the brand was created in 2014 by a friend and herself after graduation. They started selling blouses and scarfs, but only for six months as both started working and the business fell apart.
In 2018, Dewi completed her degree from university but realised that she did not have the passion for engineering. Her real passion was in business and, together with her sister, decided to go back and rebuild Heeladina.
“I was out of a job and I was pregnant at that time. It was a humble beginning. We started with RM500 and with a small capital it was challenging to us. We grew our online platform slowly and opened booths from time to time in a few university events,” said Ameera.
Dewi said the company saw a 200% jump in sales after a tweet promoting Heeladina as a gift site went viral, which then highlighted the logistics issue.
About half of Heeladina’s sales come from headscarves and half from gift sets. It sells an average 15,000 pieces a month (each RM10-RM50), as well as 5,000 gift sets (each box RM30-RM100 or more). Its target customers are students and those in their 20s.
Dewi said other sellers may have a variety of scarfs, but not in a variety of colours. Heeladina capitalises on this and offers as many colours as it can.
“For us, one type of scarf has 40-100 shades of colours and that’s what makes people interested in us. When women like certain clothes, they want to have lots of colours from the same type of blouse. That is the same with what we do here. Customers try to collect all colours from one type of shawl.”
Now, the duo plans to enable direct purchase for customers on its website this year. Its website is currently used for its over 300 dropship agents to submit their orders. Heeladina also targets to have men’s clothing and a children’s line in a year.
Ninja Van Malaysia head of sales & partnership Fariz Maswan said that with the launch of Heeladina’s website, it is looking at API (application programming interface) integration to create delivery orders seamlessly and receive real-time tracking updates.
Coupled with Ninja Van’s same-day and next-day delivery options, customer can choose when they want to receive the items.
Fariz observed a high number of online purchases during the movement control order period. And whether it is same-day or next-day delivery, he said, Ninja Van is doing its best to help businesses and SMEs grow.
“All these would only possible if there’s integration and seamless transfers, so we can increase operational efficiency, from order, fulfilment to delivery, where the whole timeframe is cut short.”
Ninja Van works with over 2,000 active sellers in Malaysia and has solutions for all types of businesses in Malaysia.
“Half of the battle is already won when businesses (shippers) get the sales but the important part is the fulfilment of the orders. We noticed that the traditional courier market still did not address the shipper’s point of view. We focus on shippers’ part – improve efficiency in terms of order processing with digital order creation and real-time tracking to help manage customers’ expectations.”
