JAKARTA, 31 March 2020 – On 2 March 2020, President Joko Widodo officially announced the first two confirmed cases of COVID-19 among Indonesian citizens. Shortly after the announcement, panic buying emerged, with consumers purchasing large quantities of food and everyday essentials. This led to shortages of key products, including rice, cooking oil, and hand sanitiser, with supermarket shelves quickly running out of stock.

The panic buying phenomenon was not limited to offline retail, but also extended to online channels, including official brand websites, marketplaces, and social commerce platforms. According to data from e-commerce enabler SIRCLO, online shopping activity in Indonesia increased significantly from late January, after the World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a global health emergency. Health and hygiene products such as hand sanitiser, hand soap, wet wipes, and vitamins recorded the strongest increase in purchases in February.

Figure 1. Products that Recorded Increased Purchases in February and March (% represents sales growth)

All four products listed above recorded purchase increases of more than 100% compared with previous months. In February, hand sanitiser saw the sharpest rise, with purchases increasing by 531%. Hand soap followed with an increase of 304%, while wet wipes ranked third at 227%. Health products and vitamin supplies also recorded strong growth, with sales increasing by 210%.

As the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Indonesia continued to rise, the President called on the public to practise physical distancing and work from home. This further accelerated the shift in consumer demand from physical stores to online channels, reflected in both higher website traffic and increased online sales. Following the announcement of Indonesia’s first two confirmed COVID-19 cases, several official stores of hygiene brands managed by SIRCLO recorded four times more traffic than the previous week.

Brian Marshal, CEO and Co-founder of SIRCLO, said, “With physical distancing measures in place, online stores could continue to see further increases in traffic and sales. Based on sales data from the brands we support across marketplaces, the four hygiene-related product categories that recorded sharp increases in demand and sales remained among the top-performing categories in March.”

“By the third week of March, hand sanitiser sales had increased by 585%. Hand soap sales rose by 355%, while vitamin products increased by 242%,” Brian said. One notable example was ANTIS, a hand sanitiser brand and SIRCLO client, which recorded a surge in sales on Tokopedia on 23 March. “Within just 42 minutes of the product being uploaded, around 72,000 units were sold,” he added. Meanwhile, wet wipes recorded the highest increase in sales, at 587%.

Based on existing sales data, SIRCLO projected that among these four high-demand product categories, wet wipes would record the strongest increase in the coming period, at 719.63%. A study published in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the COVID-19 virus could remain viable for up to four hours on copper, 24 hours on cardboard, and 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel surfaces. Dr Kalisvar Marimuthu, Senior Consultant in Infectious Diseases at Singapore’s National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), noted that wet wipes are more suitable for cleaning surfaces than for cleaning hands.

Figure 2. Products projected to record an increase in online sales in March (% represents the projected rate of sales growth)

In addition, SIRCLO projected that hand sanitiser sales would increase by 640.95%, followed by hand soap at 440.26% and vitamin products at 308.72%. According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hand sanitiser containing at least 60% alcohol can be an effective alternative for hand hygiene when soap and water are not available.

“This panic buying phenomenon can create an imbalance in product distribution, particularly for those who need these items most. As an e-commerce enabler, SIRCLO’s role is not only to help brands and businesses sell online, but also to support more balanced product distribution and help prevent negative consequences during the pandemic, such as extreme price increases,” Brian explained.

“As long as the pandemic continues, people are likely to maintain physical distancing measures and become increasingly reliant on online stores for their everyday needs. This means that a strong digital presence will become even more important for businesses going forward. Now is the time for brands to strengthen their online presence so they can continue delivering value to their customers,” Brian explained.

Brand and business owners can strengthen their online presence in several ways, including by building their own websites, selling through marketplaces such as Tokopedia, Shopee, and Lazada, and adopting social commerce through channels such as WhatsApp. These initiatives, together with customer service, marketing, order fulfilment, and other sales operations, can be managed through SIRCLO’s platform as a one-stop solution for online sales. Every day, SIRCLO helps brands process tens of thousands of product units for sale across multiple marketplace channels.

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About SIRCLO

Founded in 2013, SIRCLO is a technology company that provides solutions to help businesses sell online. SIRCLO offers two products: SIRCLO Store and SIRCLO Commerce. SIRCLO Store is a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform that enables small and medium-sized local businesses to build their own online stores. At the time, SIRCLO Store had supported nearly 1,000 active paying users in building their brands and growing their businesses online, including ATS The Label, Benscrub, Evete Naturals, Namaste Organic, This Is April, and Heytimmy Kidswear.

SIRCLO Commerce is a channel management solution designed to support enterprise brands entering online distribution channels. Powered by technology that synchronises sales across multiple marketplaces, SIRCLO Commerce was trusted by leading brands including Reckitt Benckiser, Unilever, KAO, Arnott’s, L’Oréal, Eiger, and Levi’s. For more information about SIRCLO, visit www.sirclo.com.