Petaling Street goes online for CNY celebration

 

The KL Hawkers and Petty Traders Association and e-commerce platform Shopee will be working together to bring Petaling Street traders online in time for the upcoming Chinese New Year (CNY)celebration.

The initiative called “Petaling Street Goes Ong-Line” will see participating traders being promoted under the “Buy Malaysia” initiative on Shopee, allowing their products to be marketed and sold nationwide.

Petaling Street, fondly known as Malaysia’s Chinatown, was earlier reported seeing their traders experiencing losses of up to 95 percent due to the ongoing movement control order (MCO) 2.0 in the country, as the daily announcement of positive Covid-19 cases remains high.

Kuala Lumpur Hawkers and Petty Traders Association chairperson Ang Say Tee said members now have an oversupply of CNY paraphernalia, ox-related clothing and so much more.

“With this partnership, we hope that Malaysians will support our vendors by purchasing their CNY needs from them and help us protect the legacy of Petaling Street,” he said in a statement recently.

Meanwhile, regional managing director of Shopee, Ian Ho said, the e-commerce platform is hoping that with access to the entire Malaysian consumer market from Perlis to Sarawak, the traders will not only be able to prevent losses but also see their profits soar.

“While we recognise that these are short-term measures, we believe it can offer some cash flow relief and we will continue to find new ways to extend the support to these traders even after Chinese New Year,” he said.

To kickstart the initiative, there will be more than 1,500 items being offered in a special “Petaling Street Goes Ong-Line” collection on Shopee starts from as low as 88 sen.

Participating traders will also get to enjoy the surge in customer traffic seeing that the Shopee 2.2 CNY Sale is currently taking place on the platform, and will end on Feb 13.

Additionally, the traders will be able to take advantage of the free Shopee University e-commerce workshops available in Mandarin, Bahasa Malaysia and English to know the trade of online selling.

- Bernama