“Be Relentlessly Obsessed About Your Customers” with Daisy Jiang
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Daisy Jiang is the logistics entrepreneur behind the company Bookairfreight, which provides international shipping services to small and medium-sized businesses. Her obsession with building simple experiences backed by world-class customer service has led to triple-digit year-over-year growth and over 90% customer retention. Daisy shares the story that took her from professional services in Shanghai to running a globally distributed team.
Can you tell our readers about your background?
Entrepreneurship has always been a big part of my family - my stepmother owned and operated multiple stationary stores in Beijing(?). After graduating from high school I studied at the Shanghai Institute of Technology, then began working as a consultant at FTI Consulting in Shanghai before moving on to a similar role at the law firm King & Wood Malleson. But my real passion was in startups, so I left the amazing perks of that role behind and started working at a logistics startup in Hong Kong. Soon after that, I left and started Bookairfreight!
What inspired you to start your business?
I’ve always been excited about the world of startups - bringing in a small, highly motivated group of people to solve a novel problem is what gets me out of bed every day. While working at the logistics startup in Hong Kong, I noticed that dealing with international bulk shipments (for example moving goods from a factory in China to a warehouse in the USA) was incredibly behind the times. It was phone calls, emails, faxes(!) back and forth over several days before you could get a pricing quote, which I found to be totally ridiculous. As I researched more into the industry, I realized there was a big opportunity to modernize freight forwarding, and that’s where the idea for Bookairfreight came about.
Where is your business based?
We are incorporated in Hong Kong, but it’s a truly global team. Right now I spend significant time in China to be closer to our suppliers, but my co-founder is based out of the San Francisco Bay Area, and engineering, product, and design happen out of Latin America and Africa, with marketing out of India.
How did you start your business? What were the first steps you took?
International transportation and freight forwarding is a very traditional industry, so coming in as a young woman without outside experience was incredibly challenging. I started out by working (for free!) at the largest freight forwarding company in Hong Kong to get a much better idea of how the industry worked and what the issues were. This is where I saw that digitization was almost nonexistent, meaning all the work was done manually. Once I learned enough and felt comfortable venturing out on my own, I got in touch with freight forwarders who were excited about working with a tech startup to grow their business, found a technical co-founder, and worked to build out our product and grow our customer base!
What has been the most effective way of raising awareness for your business?
So much of successful marketing starts with understanding your customer base deeply, and going from there. Besides the general tools like SEO, Google Ads, and social media, we also made sure that our website and platform were really easy to use and share. This way, when a user found a shipping quote they liked, it was very
easy for them to send it to their own contacts
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
In a way, the biggest challenges turned out to be the biggest opportunities. Finding a co-founder in a completely different time zone meant we had to build a strong culture of documenting and communicating effectively because anything that wasn’t clear meant a 12-hour delay to get an answer! But this helped us build the foundation for a fully remote company.
Not having previous experience in freight forwarding was also incredibly difficult, but it also meant we could really sympathize with our customers, who themselves were not familiar with the industry. This made it easy to build a product that really brought value to this customer segment.
How do you stay focused?
I’m very good at multitasking, which is important when issues are cropping up all the time. At the end of the day, I make sure to plan ahead what is important to accomplish, and then I’m head down getting it done. No fancy tricks for me!
How do you differentiate your business from the competition?
This comes down to really understanding who our customers are and what they need. We work with small e-commerce businesses that don’t necessarily have their own logistics department. This customer segment needs a very simple way to find and book shipping quotes, and strong customer service to make sure they understand everything that’s going on. Our tools and products make it super easy and clear for this type of customer to find the right rates for their business, book them, and manage them, and we take care of everything else. In this way, we operate as our customers’ shipping partners or even their internal logistics department.
Our competitors have more of an enterprise (i.e. bigger company) focus, and while they might have functionality that we don’t, for micro and small businesses we make the process so easy and straightforward that they come back time and time again. Additionally, most competitors are ocean freight focused and we are more specialized in air freight solutions.
Of course, it doesn’t hurt that we have excellent suppliers we work with and are always looking to improve on our pricing and value-add services, such as faster delivery times, insurance coverage, and rates that have tax and duties already baked into the pricing!
What has been your most effective marketing strategy to grow your business?
Referrals and word of mouth! Small business entrepreneurship can have small, well-trusted circles. When you do a good job, people talk!
What is your best piece of advice for aspiring and new entrepreneurs?
Everyone says the cliche “however hard you think it’ll be, it will be even harder”, so I won’t go with that. Practically speaking, be able to support yourself without a steady income for at least a year and a half, preferably 2 years. Additionally, think about your marketing strategy very early on - just building something won’t bring in people, so make sure it’s the right solution for your customers and that you can reach out to them effectively.
What are your favorite apps, blogs, and books? Why?
App - Youtube. I’m always watching videos about the economy, business, etc in the background as I’m working. Watching videos is so much more efficient for me than reading in many cases.
Blog: http://www.paulgraham.com/
Book: The hard thing about the hard things
What is your favorite business tool or resource? Why?
With our distributed team, Slack is by far our most important tool. Being able to jump into quick one on one huddles, easy screen share, easy search. It truly enables our business when people are working in different time zones.
Who is your business role model?
Ben Chestnut - founder of Mailchimp
How do you balance work and life?
This is not easy at an early-stage startup, full stop. At the end of the day, bringing in trusted people, empowering them, and letting them make decisions allows me some amount of downtime.
Favorite way to decompress?
To get a massage!
What do you have planned for the next 6 months?
Bookairfreight is really hitting its stride - we know our customers very well, we’re confident in our services, and we are going to continue providing value to them. The next 6 months are all about making sure the people who need our services know where to find us, and continuously making their experience on our website better and easier.
How can our readers connect with you?
Our website is www.bookairfreight.com. We also have a blog www.bookairfreight.com/blog where we post about the current state of the industry, as well as guides on how to import different products.
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bookairfreight