Sheila Lina, the 30-year-old daughter of Customs commissioner Alberto Lina, put off her Hollywood dream and returned to Manila in 2009 to help in the family business.
Her father is now in charge of the Bureau of Customs, the agency tasked to collect import duties to support government finances. The petite airfreight heiress supervises the family’s latest company Air21 Global Inc., analytics and consultancy firm Dun & Bradstreet Philippines Inc. and homegrown electronic commerce platform Shopinas.com, which she formed herself.
Shopinas.com, the online unit of Air21 Global, connects sellers and shoppers, providing a convenient and secure online marketplace where anyone can buy and sell items such as shoes, bags, accessories, personal care products and gadgets.
Before she came to help in the family business, Sheila and her sister Donna May established Ube Media LLC in Los Angeles, which produced films, TV shows and corporate videos. Donna May still runs the company, which relocated to the Philippines later.
“I worked as a film producer. I set up a film production company, Ube Media LLC in Los Angeles together with my sister,” Sheila says in an interview.
Sheila has always been fascinated by digital technology. “If not managing Shopinas/Air21, I would probably have started another company, this time in the burgeoning digital therapeutics and wellness space. I’m very interested in how technology can help us live healthier and more contented lives,” she says.
She wants to help develop the Philippine online market, the reason why she co-founded Ureka Forum, the largest e-commerce circuit designed to give Filipino small and medium enterprises the opportunity to grow their businesses through e-commerce.
Members of the Ureka Forum consortium include Air21, Shopinas, AMTI, DragonPlay, the Trade Department, Panahon TV, PLDT Smart SME Nation, Janette Toral and GeiserMaclang.
Sheila, a business major graduate abroad and an actor by heart, formed Shopinas.com in 2009 when she came back from her pursuit of Hollywood dream. She got the idea of Shopinas.com when entrepreneurs using social media platform Multiply tapped the services of Air21 to pick up the products and deliver it to customers.
She says she saw the need for hassle-free online transactions for both entrepreneurs and consumers six years ago.
“So around 2009, our family business is in logistics and I saw that Multiply was using us as a logistics provider of choice, but that time, it would happen online. The entrepreneur would say, can you deposit in my bank account and then I’ll deliver it. I’ll let Air21 pick up and deliver so that’s part of the idea. Why can’t we build another platform where all are included,” Lina says, in recalling how she came up with the idea for Shopinas.com.
She says Shopinas.com now provides end-to-end solutions where one can upload products with price and the system will basically take care of processing the payment and the deliveries. “So essentially what you have to ask the entrepreneur is to market your store and to fulfill the orders,” she says.
“We have our payments options, we have our logistics included,” she says. Shopinas.com holds office at the same warehouse in Paraîƒque City used by Air21 as headquarters.
Shopinas wants to help entrepreneurs build their own online market using their creativity on how they want to advertise their store or their products, she says.
Sheila says unlike other online market platforms where the sellers’ pages are in standard format, Shopinas.com sellers can design their own page and decide on how their products are displayed.
She says unlike other e-commerce websites that are customer-focused, “for us in Shopinas, we’re a bit more curated. We’re very entrepreneur-focused. If you want to control the feel of your brand, you can’t do that on other online market,” she says.
“We give the entrepreneur the freedom if they want to brand their site. If they want to do other things, they have that flexibility,” she says.
Sheila says Shopinas.com also aims to instill good entrepreneurial mindset among the sellers. Entrepreneurs are required to submit all necessary documents before they are allowed to use the platform of Shopinas.com, to make the transactions legitimate and compliant with the Bureau of Internal Revenue guidelines.
Shopinas.com earns through commissions from the transactions. “We charge commission, and there are certain withholding tax that we hold, so we have to ask them to give us certain forms,” she says.
“One of the things that we distinct ourselves is we have a very stringent criteria in terms of which kind of entrepreneur gets on board so they have to submit all their registration, all their documentary compliances and they have to do certain types of documentary compliances with us,” she says.
“One of the things that we want to do is to instill a sense of responsibility, because we want to make this very legal as a business,” she says.
“SMEs may find our policies too stringent. However, it is to ensure that we only host legitimate businesses that are compliant with legal and regulatory requirements. We want to avoid cases of fraudulent sellers and give our customers peace of mind when they shop on our platform,” she says.
While she is aware of the consequence of very stringent rules, Sheila says the company cannot lower its standards. “In lowering your standards there’s a high risk for fraud. There is a high risk of grey market. For instance, people are selling fake designer bags. These kinds of products, for me, do not reflect what we want to promote like Filipino creativity and the right way of doing business,” she says.
“So for us, they will see there is a difference in terms of how we are perceived as an e-commerce player,” she says.
Since Shopinas.com was launched in 2009, it has grown to a network of 200 sellers. A team of 11 professionals handles the needs of sellers as well as the software, business and financial aspects of the network.
Shopinas.com has its own logistics partner and payment gateways that facilitate financial transactions.
“Our responsibility is really building the platform and making sure that the entrepreneurs are on it. You follow the policies and follow through in terms of whatever orders they have,” she says.
Sheila says e-commerce penetration rate in the Philippines has a long way to go. She says one reason the bigger players are doing a lot better than the SMEs is because large companies spend substantial amount in advertising. She says Shopinas.com can help SMEs reach more consumers.
“We’re building our reputation as reputable e-commerce player. We’re here to help the entrepreneurs and build a safe community of sellers. All the transactions in Shopinas.com are legal and there are no fake products. You will be more comfortable buying online,” she says.
She says Shopinas.com does not offer cash-on-delivery payment scheme at the moment. As a small operational team, she says they can not afford the losses associated with the risks of COD.
“At Shopinas.com, we purposely do not accept COD, even though we know it will dramatically increase sales,” she says.
Sheila says to further support and empower Filipino entrepreneurs, Shopinas.com became one of the proponents of Ureka Forum which aims for the mass conversion of SMEs into online market players.
“It’s great to be invited to be one of the proponents of the wonderful Ureka project because our vision at Shopinas is to empower Filipino entrepreneurs to promote their business by doing online,” she says.
“What would we like to do with the Ureka project is to make these invisible entrepreneurs visible by bringing them online. We in Shopinas.com have a built a platform and essentially what it does is combine three elements of e-commerce: online shop, payment gateway and logistics,” she says.
Shopinas.com is participating in the second leg of Ureka Forum at Iloilo Convention Center in Iloilo City on Feb. 20, after the successful first leg in Baguio City.
“In the first leg of Ureka Forum in Baguio, we were able to convert 33 entrepreneurs to bring their business online. Our target is 150 entrepreneurs for Iloilo’s forum,” she says.