1 in 3 VisMin businesses now ship to Luzon, thanks to e-commerce

CEBU CITY, Philippines — Small businesses across the Visayas and Mindanao regions are posting sharp gains in online sales, a sign that the digital marketplace’s reach is extending outside Metro Manila.

Total sales generated by Visayas-Mindanao, or VisMin, merchants selling online rose 24% between 2023 and 2025, while order volume from Visayan sellers climbed 35%, according to industry data compiled by e-commerce platform Shopee Philippines.

Average orders per seller were up 51 percent over the same period.

READ MORE: Understanding the online shopping lingos

Meanwhile, demand grew across categories, with orders for motor vehicle parts up 78 percent and baby and children’s products surging 186 percent from 2023 to 2025, the same data showed.

Digital economy

Analysts and industry groups have long pointed to the Visayas and Mindanao as an underdeveloped segment of the Philippine economy.

Businesses in agriculture, food production, tourism, and manufacturing often struggle to reach customers beyond their home provinces because of the archipelago’s geography and uneven logistics networks.

That appears to be changing.

More sellers in the region are adopting online tools such as short-form video, live-streaming and automated customer chat to reach buyers, a shift that has coincided with the sales growth, industry data show.

Transactions tied to livestream shopping sessions rose 159 percent in 2025 compared with 2023.

Reach

The reach of VisMin-based sellers has also widened.

Top sellers in the region shipped to buyers in 81 of the Philippines’ 82 provinces in 2025, and more than one in three orders from VisMin sellers were delivered to Luzon, the northern island group that includes Metro Manila, the data showed.

Individual merchants describe the shift in concrete terms.

Em Uy-Taclibon, who runs a Davao City-based cast-iron cookware business called Filipino-Made Cast Iron, said she used to pack and ship orders by hand, limiting her to about five a day given the weight of the products.

After outsourcing packing and shipping to a third-party fulfillment service last year, she said she freed up roughly 14 hours a week that she has since redirected toward sourcing new products and marketing, and her sales have roughly doubled.

“When you’re managing everything on your own, your time becomes the limit to how much the business can grow,” Uy-Taclibon said.

Economists have generally credited e-commerce with lowering the cost of entry for small businesses outside major urban centers, though they caution that gains remain uneven and depend on continued investment in rural internet access and logistics.

Micro, small and medium enterprises make up the vast majority of registered businesses in the Philippines and are a major source of employment outside the capital region.

READ MORE: Online shopping scams: How to avoid them

Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.

Your subscription has been successful.

Read Next

Disclaimer: The comments uploaded on this site do not necessarily represent or reflect the views of management and owner of Cebudailynews. We reserve the right to exclude comments that we deem to be inconsistent with our editorial standards.