Manila, Philippines – Leading e-commerce Shopee has announced that the platform and Colgate-Palmolive inked their first Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to jointly drive e-commerce penetration of its oral care, home care, and personal care products and category on Shopee. The tie-up is a multi-year partnership and will run across seven markets in the region.

Starting 2022, Colgate-Palmolive will become a strategic partner under Shopee’s Regional Champion Brands Program, which will help strengthen Colgate-Palmolive’s online presence and deliver more of its products to consumers through Shopee’s extensive reach. 

Shopee’s Regional Champion Brands Program is an exclusive, by-invite-only program that is open to top brand partners, aimed to better support brands in accelerating their growth on regional and local levels. Shopee currently has 17 brands on board the program.

Acording to Shopee, since launching the company’s official store on Shopee Mall in 2019, Colgate-Palmolive has achieved steady growth year-on-year and has consecutively ranked among the Top 5 personal care brands during Shopee’s year-end mega shopping campaigns. Shopee shared that in the recent 11.11 Big Christmas Sale, Colgate achieved a record highest sales in a single day and grew more than 100% vs 9.9 Super Shopping Day. 

With the partnership, Colgate aims to grow its digital commerce business across Southeast Asia more than 20 times by 2025.

Mukul Deoras, president of Colgate-Palmolive APAC, said, “We are excited to grow our partnership with Shopee to better serve our customers in the region. As the world’s leading Oral Care company, we look forward to winning together in Personal Care with Shopee by maximizing the potential of our digital commerce business. To achieve this, we will focus on delivering greater value and enhanced customer experiences through our differentiated product offerings and innovations.”

Meanwhile, Chris Feng, Shopee’s CEO, commented, “Shopee is glad to be a strategic e-commerce partner to one of the world’s most recognized Personal and Oral Care brands. As a market leader, Colgate-Palmolive has achieved tremendous growth in the past year and will be a valuable partner in helping to drive further online expansion of the Personal Care category on Shopee. We hope to support Colgate-Palmolive in capturing more opportunities through our robust ecosystem and deep understanding of consumers in each market.”

To accelerate its growth momentum, Colgate-Palmolive will continue to activate a hyper-localized strategy. Earlier this year, Colgate-Palmolive and Shopee launched a joint oral care study to identify gaps, behaviors and unmet needs of Generation Z shoppers. As a result of the insights garnered, Colgate-Palmolive and Shopee co-created and launched a new toothbrush series with the ‘Brush Your Way’ regional campaign in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Vietnam, and the Philippines.

Melbourne, Australia – Consumer brand Kogan.com has recently acquired Mighty Ape, a New Zealand-based online retailer, which signals a much larger retail business growth across ANZ via new customer offerings and renewed business structure.

The complementary acquisition provides Kogan.com an immediate access scale of the New Zealand market, to which Mighty Ape has built its own business presence in New Zealand. 

For David Shafer, Kogan.com’s chief operating officer and chief financial officer, the recent acquisition speaks to the shared history and values they have with Mighty Ape, noting the business track of the New Zealand online retailer to many customers.

“Mighty Ape will give us significant scale in New Zealand and further strength across a variety of operational dimensions. We will be drawing on Mighty Ape’s deep experience in gaming, toys, other entertainment product categories, and the New Zealand market, and combining this experience with Kogan.com’s sourcing, technology, systems, infrastructure, and marketplace capabilities, to further enhance the group’s already market-leading offering across the Tasman,” Shafer stated, also noting that “they will look forward to serving and delighting customers throughout New Zealand and Australia”

On the other hand, Mighty Ape Founder and CEO Simon Barton said, “The Mighty Ape team is very happy to be joining forces with the Kogan.com Group, as we embark on the next stage of our growth. Combining with Kogan.com will assist Mighty Ape to expand our product range and improve our customer experience. I am excited about working with Ruslan and David, and the broader Kogan.com team — who have built an incredible business — while also aligning and creating more growth opportunities for the incredible team that helped build Mighty Ape to be New Zealand’s most trusted retailer brand.”

Mumbai, India – As the country nears its annual festival of lights, Indian consumer brand Godrej HIT recently uploaded a Diwali-themed advertisement, with focus on the brand’s LAL HIT insecticide product.

The video is centered on the aspect of Diwali Safai or the general cleaning of the house before the actual Diwali festival. In the video, a lady’s perspective narrates how family members have high hopes and anticipation for this year’s festivities. Starting from her father-in-law changing into a more festive attire, the video then shifts to the lady’s brother-in-law, using the featured insecticide brand to spray into the kitchen sink and other house corners as a sign of focus on hygiene and cleanliness. Lastly, the video pans to the mother-in-law laying down with a treat of face mask. With the subtle brand hit within the last minutes of the advertisement, the ad concludes that this year’s Diwali is going to be a #SuperHITdiwali.

With the upcoming festival hampered by the country’s restrictions on festivities and large gatherings, Sunil Kataria, CEO of  Godrej Consumer Products for India & SAARC (GCPL) comments that the said advertisement is a way of showing that despite hindrances, this year’s Diwali will capture the same anticipation and festive fervor like past festivities.

“2020 will witness an inherently ‘indoor’ festive season, but that will in no way dampen the festive spirits. We want to remind everyone how even though this year’s festivities will be on a smaller-scale with our immediate family, we will enjoy it in our own unique yet endearing way,” Kataria stated.

Meanwhile, Amar Singh, regional creative officer for Lowe Lintas, the Indian wing of marketing communications company MullenLowe commented, “”Diwali 2020 is unlike any that we have experienced or are likely to experience in our lifetimes. And after everything we have been through in this trying period, each one of us deserves to celebrate it. Conceived by Rajat Dawar and Vishal Bagade, this film aims to capture this sentiment. And is a wish for all of us to have a Super HIT Diwali from a brand that ensures we are always safe and protected in our homes.”