Do you know what is E-tailing? Actually, E-tailing is the abbreviation of Electronic retailing, which refers to the process of selling retail goods through internet. E-tailing is synonymous with business-to-consumer transaction. With the introduction of E-tailing in Malaysia, many of the businesses have been converted from brick-and-mortar organization to click-and-mortar organization. Examples of Malaysian companies which make use of E-tailing system are MPH (book retailer), Dell (hardware retailer), McDonalds (fast food retailer), etc.

In my opinion, E-tailing can only involves goods which are non-perishable due to length of cycle time is long. Normally, the delivery of goods takes 2-3days. So, it is impossible to apply E-tailing for perishable goods because there is no way to prevent the perishable goods from being rotten during the transition.

However, I felt shocked when I knew that even “fishes” can be sold through internet! This brilliant idea was come from Abdullah Ibrahim, general manager of Tanjung Dawai Fisherman Association. When I saw the headline “Fish now sold via the Net”, I was wondering that how they can keep the fishes at the very fresh status. After I gone through the article, then I only realized that there is a little bit of “Tricks” behind it.

By combining the E-tailing system and bidding system, it will help the supplier in reducing cost in terms of renting a physical market place to sell their fishes. The bidders will gather at the supplier’s place and start to place their bids through E-mail. When the bidding period is end, the supplier will acknowledge the bidder who provides best deal upon the acceptance of the offer. Besides that, the supplier also able to hit two birds with one stone by cutting down the transportation cost (i.e.: delivery the fishes to market place), while selling the fishes at a high price through auction.

“Nothing in this is impossible, just need some thought and creativity to make the impossible become possible”. There is a possibility for a physical market place to lose its function as a place to trade. Perhaps, this will not happen in Malaysia.