In 2021, e-commerce is a popular way of doing business today where various products are easily accessible to other people. Online eCommerce marketplaces are a great place where companies can supply products and thus do business on their own websites. Finding halal products is a common problem for Muslim consumers on the global level in 2021, but with the help of halal e-commerce marketplaces, an entire halal industry is easily accessible with a few clicks and a credit card.
In this way, Islamic ethics and law are respected and preserved. According to the State of the Global Islamic Economic Report 2020/2021 by Salaam gateway, Muslims are a fast-growing population that reached a number of 1.9 billion people in 2019, and statistics predict an increase to 3 billion people by 2060.
This fact alone claims that the Islamic economy is on the rise and that there will be an increasing need for Islamic products, products that have a valid halal certification.
Online shopping – a new way to shop
With the development of technology and its wide use on a global level, by 2021, online shopping has developed and become a normal way to buy things we need and a new lifestyle.
For those who were skeptical about shopping online, in 2020 and 2021 they turned to this way of shopping due to the situation with Covid-19. Store closures and lockdowns have forced people to shop as much as possible online.
Well-known online marketplace platforms have different types of products in their offers, so you can get everything you need from the comfort of your home.
The benefits of online shopping are numerous, next to the fact that you do not have to walk for hours in shopping malls there is the biggest advantage of online shopping and that is being able to find certain products that suit your need. Sometimes markets don’t offer something you need, while a few seconds of searching the internet is enough to find it.
This saves your time and effort and plus you get what you need. This benefit has proven to be very beneficial to Muslims around the world because in the communities in which they live it is sometimes difficult for them to find appropriate food, clothing, and other products that are in line with Islamic ethics.
With the development of the halal industry, halal products are very easily available.
A halal online marketplace that you can find
Halal marketplaces can be divided into two groups that differ in their business and form. Given this fact, we distinguish these two groups:
- Halal Business-to-Business (B2B) marketplaces and
- Halal Business-to-Consumers (B2C) marketplaces
B2b e commerce platform has the meaning “Business to business” which means that this way of doing business involves supply chain, buyers, and sellers. This type of platform is often international, business is done between companies. Larger companies are suppliers who offer smaller companies products for their own businesses or websites.
This business is an online form of business between a wholesaler and a retailer. It often operates across borders and mostly large quantities of products are included in orders.
On the other hand, B2C marketplaces are a little bit different because they can offer specific categories of e commerce, in this case, halal e commerce. The acronym B2C stands for “Business to Consumers” which means that consumers can order products directly in small quantities. This group is more familiar to us, because those are sites like Amazon, eBay, Aliexpress, that we all know about.
In this article, we will show some of the B2C marketplaces where Muslim consumers can find halal food and a lot of other different products like beauty products, tech products, clothes, home decoration, home appliances, cars, books, and other services. We will return to this group later.
Today’s Business B2B eCommerce Platforms
When we wrote earlier about halal b2b e-commerce sites, some of those sites stopped operating. Business is always unpredictable and an update is always needed. Here we will introduce you to halal b2b e-commerce marketplaces that still operates:
OneAgrix is among the most successful and we have selected them as the product of our analysis which shows that their website visitor’s traffic is satisfying. The real benefit of this kind of business is that the marketplace eCommerce platform brings enough of the amount of buyers ’traffic, so the seller can find his market regardless of the place where it is established.
One of the characteristics of these halal b2b marketplaces is that they do not show the price per halal product on their sites because they present bulk sales. However, OneAgrix differs in this field because it displays prices per halal product which is otherwise a feature of B2C marketplaces as well.
Muslim buyers who visit markets that offer halal products such as Daganghalal,OneAgrixs and similar can find various products such as:
- Food
- food ingredients
- dairy products
- health and beauty products
- agriculture produce
- pharmaceutical products
- packaging service
- beverages
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Halal B2C Marketplaces
The global halal industry is showing significant growth as people are moving away from the street due to restrictions imposed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and the lifestyle is changing and adapting to the situation. Halal economy and finance are becoming more satisfying according to 2021 statistics.
Given this fact, B2C marketplace platforms are very successful solutions and these are the markets we are more familiar with because they are offering their product directly to consumers.
They offer sales in small quantities and have a lot of different products from technology, food, beauty products to clothes and home decor. Trade platforms differ in that some do business internationally, and some we found do business only for Malaysian consumers, such as:
On the Muslimbrands.com.my platform, Malaysian consumers can download the app to their smartphones and be constantly up to date when new discounts appear.
Also, there are other halal market sites that do business internationally, and they are:
Myhalalkitchen.com – Halal foods & artisan products
NoorAndZafir.com – Fashion halal market
Ummazing.com – UK-based
https://www.halalstreet.co.uk/ – Halal Malaysian food and products to the UK consumer market
Halaldunia.com – Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia & Brunei
Halal products online – How halal online marketplaces can be useful to users?
The halal industry has shown great success and the sale of halal products has proven to be a lucrative business. Why is that so?
The reason for this is precisely because products that are halal and in accordance with the Islamic point of view are not always available to Muslims. The online marketplace is a global halal market accessible to all Muslims who use the Internet.
Many b2b e commerce businesses and b2c marketplaces have evolved as Muslims have reacted to the need for their own trade where they will be able to manage what products are offered, their content, and form.
Facts how halal online marketplaces can be useful to users:
- purchase of food that is halal
- visibility of food certification
- purchase of clothing that complies with Islamic ethics
- easy product availability (thanks to international platforms)
Buying halal products is one of the challenges for Muslims living in countries where Muslims are not the majority of people. Neither food nor clothing that is in accordance with Islamic laws dictated by the Qur’an and the practice of the Prophet Muhammad PBUH can’t be found in their cities and shops. The e commerce platform as a halal market is the only way for some Muslims to live by their religious beliefs.
Food ingredients
Halal food is a very important part of Islamic ethics, and when it comes to food it is not just that Muslims should avoid pork and alcohol. Halal food by definition means much more than that.
Today in 2021, any food product we take contains ingredients written on a table with various labels that we do not understand, and those ingredients can have a haram background. Many flavor enhancers and emulsifiers come from lard, so for a product to go through the halal certification process, it must be completely free of haram substances.
When shopping in markets it is sometimes difficult to choose and find food that is halal, but in an online halal market, there is no need to worry about this because consumers can buy fully tested products.
Overview – Halal B2B e-commerce market landscape and challenges
As for the challenges that halal b2b e commerce faces, they are numerous.
1-The first challenge is getting companies that operate offline to become online.
DagangHalal had to deal with this challenge in the early days. It helped small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to approach broad market addressing through its straight outreach and product focus.
CEO of DagangHalal, Khairil Ismahafiz, stated for Salaam Gateway that often SMEs are operating with small budgets for marketing and branding and that his platform is helping small and medium enterprises to launch their brand on a global level.
2-The second challenge is properly checking the authenticity of halal certification as many companies are shut down due to errors in this step.
The key function of any halal e-commerce platform relies on providing confidence, as it is not enough to rely on the claims of suppliers who claim to be certified.
DagangHalal has developed its own Halal Verified Engine so that their products are verified,.
3- The third challenge is to determine product coverage because it is very important for your company if a critical scale is reached.
It is also very important that you constantly work with certifiers and check the status of the products to always achieve halal products.
New halal marketplace launched in April
New marketplaces and Muslim-friendly businesses are constantly opening, and one such is the marketplace launched in Ramadan, April 2021.
By choosing a very creative name, Ummazing, which represents Ummah + Amazing, this new marketplace has become very easy to spot from people.
This marketplace has similarities with the structure of eBay, sellers do not have to invest anything to sell on this marketplace, it’s zero-cost.
The main goal of the founders of Ummazing marketplace is to support Muslim businesses in the UK, and you can read more about this in our previous article.
Starting a new business? Check out our Resources and Tools page for Muslim small business owners and startup founders to navigate their way through their business journey, from ideation to marketing, to funding, and growth.
Summary
Muslims finally have a breadth of choice when it comes to halal products. In this article, we introduced you to the meaning of the e-commerce platform and gave an update on the halal marketplaces that are now current in the market. Some of the marketplaces are based only in Malaysia, while others operate internationally.
Every Muslim should be proud of the effort and commitment invested by people who strive to help the halal business grow and to provide people with easy access to halal products, especially food and clothing which are an essential need of every Muslim.
If you are interested in this topic, for further reading you can choose some of the interviews that Halal Marketplace founders gave for Halalop. You can read more about them on these links:
Nedma Aganovic is from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Her Engineering degree is in Petroleum Drilling and Exploration. She is also a writer where gained experience in writing creative, business and research articles. As a student, she was working as an online teacher.
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