01 · Context
The products were there, the online channel was not
I joined SAPON GROUP in May 2025 as a Digital Marketing Specialist. The traditional channels were doing very well; online was more or less left alone. As an FMCG business selling low-priced personal care products, our average order value was low.
The marketplace shops existed, but nobody owned them. Each platform ran its own way, with its own promotions, no shared process and no clear KPIs.
Margins in this category are razor thin, and platform fees alone take 25 to 28% of revenue. A small increase in ad spend, or a bit more budget for a promotion, and you are eating into capital.
02 · Problem
We knew what we spent, not what we earned
Meanwhile marketing cost was running at 50.6% of revenue, far too high. Orders depended almost entirely on advertising: switch the ads off and the numbers vanished, because repeat purchase was still low.
It got worse because reporting was entirely manual, in Excel and Google Sheets. Marketplace data had to be exported and stitched together by hand, and by the time the profit picture was visible it was too late to act on it. In short, we knew what we were spending, but not what we were making.
- Good promotions and attractive prices with no reach: shoppers never saw them, so no orders came
- No dedicated team, so nothing could be scaled
03 · Strategy
Build the measurement first, raise the budget after
In November 2025, when I was given the Head of E‑commerce role, I decided the approach had to change completely. Instead of pouring in budget and racing for revenue, I went the other way: build the measurement system first, then talk about increasing the marketing budget. The reason is practical. On margins this thin, pushing budget before you can measure the return is the fastest way to grow revenue and still lose money.
Three pillars
- Measurement: pull every key metric (traffic, CR, AOV, ROAS, CAC) and the P&L of each marketplace into one shared dashboard, so the team can intervene within the same week
- Operations: build the AOP against company targets, set budget and KPIs, and standardise SOPs under the ISO system so quality does not depend on individual judgement
- People: hire and train a dedicated team myself, splitting the roles between marketplace operations, ads, and content and design
The line was drawn on day one: marketing cost as a share of revenue had to come back into the safe range for the category, and every request for more budget had to prove itself with numbers before it was approved.
05 · Results
The numbers, before and after
50.6% → 20.1%
Marketing Cost / Revenue
0 → VND 700M+
Monthly e-commerce revenue today
−29%
CPA/CPL in the first phase
| Metric | Before | After | As of |
|---|
| Marketing Cost / Revenue |
50.6% |
20.1% |
Now |
| Monthly e-commerce revenue |
Close to zero |
VND 700M+ |
Now |
| CPA / CPL |
Baseline |
−29% |
05-11/2025 |
| Marketplaces operated |
Nobody assigned |
5 marketplaces |
From 11/2025 |
| Team size |
0 |
5 people |
Now |
| Cumulative e-commerce revenue 2026 |
0 |
VND 4,091,624,273 |
To 09/2026 |
The 2026 e-commerce revenue target is VND 8.4bn. At VND 700M+ a month today, the run rate is tracking exactly to the full-year goal.
* Note: the move from 50.6% to 20.1% is marketing cost, meaning advertising plus affiliate, as a share of revenue. It is not total operating cost; platform fees alone account for roughly 25 to 28 per cent.
** The VND 4.13bn department budget is the full-year 2026 spending plan for all e-commerce activity: salaries, platform fees, advertising and affiliate. The VND 4.09bn above is cumulative revenue to the end of September 2026, not the full year. The two figures are not set side by side to derive profit or loss.
06 · Lessons
What I took away
Looking back at rebuilding e-commerce at SAPON GROUP, three lessons stand out.
01 · Measure first, spend after
In a thin-margin category, every budget decision has to rest on detail: per marketplace, per cost group, against real performance. What you cannot measure you cannot optimise, and certainly should not scale.
02 · Build a system, not a dependency on individuals
A strong individual produces results; SOPs, KPIs and process produce growth you can sustain. A good team keeps running on the day its best person is not in the room.
03 · Do not import another category's KPIs
Every category has its own margin, break-even point and cost ceiling. A Marketing Cost / Revenue ratio that is healthy in FMCG may be wrong for cosmetics or supplements.
In the end, an e-commerce lead does not chase pretty numbers. The job is knowing exactly which number is producing the profit.
