Lazada Order Fulfillment: How it Works

We’ve already covered how you can start selling cross-border on Lazada in Southeast Asia, an E-Commerce market that will grow massively in the coming years.

Today, I’ll deep dive more into how it works when using Lazada’s highly successful fulfillment services for cross-border sellers.

By letting Lazada managing the complete logistics cycle from pick-up at your warehouse to end delivery you can increase sales, customer ratings, and focus on other important things, like marketing.

In this article, I explain the whole process from the time you ship your products to Lazada to managing returned products.

1. Ship your products to a Lazada fulfillment center

Cross-border sellers are requested to use Lazada’s own fulfillment service FBL (Fulfillment by Lazada), sending products to their centralized sortation center in Hong Kong.

From here, Lazada takes care of, storage, pick & pack, cross-border deliveries, and last mile deliveries, with competitive costs.

And it comes with many benefits.

For example, it’s (statistically) proven that FBL increases sales, reduces shipping lead times, and increases customer satisfaction.

Practically speaking, you only need to focus on adding products to your store and manage prices while Lazada:

• Updates stock levels in Seller Center
• Process your orders
• Manages your deliveries

Just a notice before we continue: sellers in Korea should not use the sortation center in Hong Kong, but a locally designated company called Rincos. Mainland sellers, on the other hand, use sortation centers in Shenzhen and Yiwu.

In this article, I focus on Lazada’s sortation process and product fulfillment in Hong Kong.

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Process when using FBL from Hong Kong

When you receive an order, you simply go to your Seller Center in the Lazada platform and choose “Ready to Ship” (RTS).

Keep in mind that the status shall be changed to “Ready to Ship” within 2 business days and delivered to the sortation center within 7 calendar days, otherwise the order will be cancelled.

The following steps are involved when you receive an order:

• Print purchase order (invoice)
• Prepare packaging according to Lazada’s guidelines
• Put purchase order inside the package
• Print delivery note (shipping label) and put outside of the parcel
• Order to arrive in HK sortation center within 5 calendar days

Information in purchase order (invoice)

The purchase order can be created in Lazada’s seller center and should include the following:

• PO number
• SKU code (max 90 in one PO)
• Brand name
• Product size
• Colour
• Quantity
• Total cost excluding VAT
• Unit cost
• Addressee (name, address, etc.)

Information on the shipping label (delivery note)

• Tracking number
• Customer name & country
• Seller info
• Product info
• Sortation center address
• Sort code (LZD + Country Code, e.g. LZDMY)
• Package number

The label should preferably be 10cm x 15cm.

Additional information like the below should also be put inside the package, if existing:

• Additional labels
• Warranty cards
• Stamps

Packaging

The packaging should be robust and have no visible damages such as dents when arriving at the sortation center. Using styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap is a good choice to assure that your packages will be accepted.

Avoid boxes that are soft or made of plastic and don’t use polystyrene beads as Lazada might reject your products in that case. There should be no scannable bar codes except for the one with the product code.

Not to forget, products shall be bundled in advance, if needed, before arriving at the fulfillment center.

How to register for FBL

Simply contact Lazada’s seller support, they will make sure whether your contract covers FBL services. If not, an addendum will be added.

Normally, you’re requested to do a trial shipment where you confirm an order from the fulfillment center in your Seller Center.

Lazada Global Shipping (LGS)

If you use FBL, you can take advantage of Lazada’s streamlined shipping service, LGS (Lazada Global Shipping) solution.

By offering its own express shipping service (LEX) and collaborating with dozens of 3PL companies all over ASEAN, you can enjoy benefits like:

• Reduced delivery lead times
• Reduced cancellation rates
• Increased sales
• Participation in promotions
• Possibility for buyers to use filter for “delivery lead time” which improves your ranking

Times Logistics Ltd is an outsourced partner and manages the sortation in Hong Kong. Thus, you need to learn Times’ OMS system, to track orders and manage deliveries.

All returns should be handled via Times’ OMS system as well (more about that below).

2. Delivery from Lazada to the end customer

After your products have passed Lazada’s internal quality control, they take care of the repacking and labelling before ship out.

The quality control doesn’t include product testing, but rather a check of the measurements, labels, and packaging.

You can simply check the status of your parcel in Lazada’s Seller Center online. When the package is ready to be shipped the status will from “ready to ship” to “shipped”.

Once the client has received the products the status automatically changes to “delivered”.

Limitations to packaging and shipments

Even if the delivery requirements are very similar between countries in ASEAN, there are some details that set them apart.

Today, we have a look at the following countries:

• Singapore
• Thailand
• Indonesia
• Malaysia
• Philippines

Singapore

• Shipping lead time: 6-7 days
• Value limitation: None
• Weight limitation: <= 20 kg
• Dimensions < 1 kg: 240 mm x 162 mm x 240 mm
• Dimensions > 1 kg: Max. length 1.5 m; W+L+H < 3 m

Indonesia

• Shipping lead time, major cities: 6-7 days
• Value limitation: None
• Weight limitation: <= 20 kg
• Dimensions: 900 mm x 900 mm x 900 mm

Philippines

• Shipping lead time, major cities: 7-8 days
• Value limitation: None
• Weight limitation: <= 20 kg
• Dimensions: 900 mm x 900 mm x 900 mm

Malaysia

• Shipping lead time, major cities: 6-7 days
• Value limitation: None
• Weight limitation: <= 20 kg
• Dimensions: 900 mm x 900 mm x 900 mm

Thailand

• Shipping lead time, major cities: 7-8 days
• Value limitation: None
• Weight limitation: <= 20 kg
• Dimensions: L+W+H <= 1200 mm

Products like alcohol, weapons, stand-alone batteries, power banks, pharmaceutical products and tobacco are prohibited in all countries. For Indonesia, mobiles are prohibited as well.

3. Managing returns

For rejected parcels, Lazada has introduced a new system referred to as “re-routing”. In short words, in case a parcel is declined by end customer it will be kept in a local cross-border venture for up to 4 weeks.

If a parcel cannot be resold within 4 weeks, it will be sent back to the sortation center it originally came from.

Just keep in mind that the re-routing process is used in all ASEAN countries except for Singapore. The re-routing process is available in Vietnam, yet, sellers cannot retrieve returned products from Vietnam at all.

Customers have full rights to return items within 7 calendar days (14 calendar days in Singapore) with the following reasons:

• Wrong item
• Missing item
• Counterfeit
• Damage
• Defective

“Change of mind” is only applicable for Thailand which simply means that a customer can return a product if he or she regrets the purchase.

Process when receiving returned parcels

• Register TIMES Logistics Return System by logging in with your Seller ID
• Click on the link received by email and visit the page to create an account
• When items reach Hong Kong, you receive email from timeslogistics@lazada.com
• You can see returned orders from Times reverse logistics OMS

You’ll be able to see items that have been returned and kept stock in Lazada’s HK warehouse with the following codes are shown:

CR = Customer return
FD = Failed delivery

A notice should be sent to Lazada 24 hours in advance before pick up and the returned parcel shall be picked up 15 working days after inbound.

Failed deliveries

At some points, shipments simply fail due to various reasons. Some of the most common are:

• Consignee is not at home
• It’s impossible to reach the consignee
• Wrong consignee information

Luckily, Lazada makes two additional attempts before the parcel is sent back.

The parcels can be picked up in the same way as returned products.

Location for pick-up of returned items

Unit B, 6/F, Roxy Industrial Centre, 58-66 Tai Lin Pai Road, Kwai Chung, Hong Kong

Contact information prior to collection

shirley.shum@timeslogistics.com.hk
simon.li@timeslogistics.com.hk

Opening hours

14:30 to 17:00 Mon-Sat

Lazada University training

Keep in mind that you should complete the training offered at the Lazada University.

It’s straightforward and easy to learn. Not following the instructions for packaging, labelling and delivery of products can result in penalizations by Lazada and customer dissatisfaction.