Firstly, let me thank the guys over at TechCabaI for creating Radar, I have really learnt a whole lot and it has given me insights (it still does) into various salient areas of personal and business interest. I appreciate everyone for their contributions and I would very much love insights into the topic above. I am planning to set up an e-commerce platform in Nigeria which will cater to a niche market (which I also plan to scale up into other African markets). I really need to have an idea of how much investments is required to set-up an e-commerce company like SuperMartNG.
I would love to have information on:
Cost of Website Design and Hosting
Payment Gateways
Warehousing
Office Space
Inventory Management
Logistics & Delivery
Customer Service
Advertising
I would also love if anyone can refer me to Rapheal Afaedor, I would love to have a one-on-one talk with him.
A wise man once told me that for a buisness to be successful online it has to be first successful offline.
Having a webshop and sorting out logistics is the least of your problems. There is a lot more that goes into running an online shop. If you have no experience running an offline shop, you first need to find someone with offline experience - stock management, supplier relations, cash flow management, partnerships, marketing - and many much more.
As for budget, you can’t put a price on it. If you are just intrested in having a webshop like any Joe Bloggs on the street then it’s less than $10 per month as Magento has all the functionalities needed built in.
But what do you consider a “modest budget”? Believe me I have googled and googled and I couldn’t get the answers I was looking for, that’s why I am asking this question here. There’s a lot of information out there though, but nobody is talking specs and costs. That’s what I need.
I have a unique idea for the e-commerce project, though its something already been done offline, nobody has been able to replicate it online just yet. I would be utilizing both avenues to increase sales.
But somebody should be able to give me an idea of what the budget looks like. I am really not interested in having a webshop like any Joe Bloggs on the street that is less than $10 per month. What I plan to set up is not a webshop, but an e-commerce business. I need a robust platform like what Jumia, Konga, SuperMart and Co are using.
You have to come up with your budget, draw a plan and state all the varaibles you need, Yudala, Konga and the likes do million dollar budges, others do thousand naira budgets, nobody can give you an estimate of what you need, you have to sit down and draw all that yourself. Got a million dollars? BTW jumia konga n co use cheap softwares
As I said, Magento is free or you can check thier site for the price of the enterprise edition. Over 70% of online shops starts off with Magento, including Konga
As for asking for the ready made budget, Goodluck with that as one shoe does not fit all.
As for stock, I am old school and believe you should have some stock and supplier relationships. This is why you need an offline retail guru
Somehow I think “Pooling” is an issue this side of the earth.
@BloodyNigerian cost of hosting : patapata 20k; web Design depends (try ready made themes from magento & co); payment gateway (paystack, webpay, PWC & rest of the gang); warehousing (unless you have your own shop, don’t go there); office space (your living room - seriously); inventory management (I’m lost, wont your platform take care of that?); logistics & delivery (Quo & co), Customer Service (starts with you and your partner or team), advertising (try creating a buzz on social media first).
My 2 cents below
The market you intend to fill based on the above narrative can determine your approach.
Questions like POD/COD, logistics and operations requirements are solved at this level of decision making.
Secondly, how much you intend to raise and how soon will influence your technology stack. For example, I read about Mara, who are also as ambitious as you to roll out online malls in 20 Africa countries in 1 year. If you are building for such size, your infrastructure need will be different from a site expecting 500 visits daily.
Above points majorly influence your strategic moves here.
A simple way to evaluate the technology behind what each site (you are curious to know about) is built on is a free tool called BuiltWith
At your scale, I hope you can fully invest into Interswitch/Unified payment as your online payment solution. This could set you back by up to N400k. However, since you are looking to expand to Africa, the online payment solution that offers cross-border financial payment in Nigeria that I know of is VoguePay
The reason you aren’t getting any responses is because
Very few people have ever done what you wAnt to do so not a lot of experienced people to provide any answers
Your question is very vague and broad. It’s like trying to find out how what the budget for an ecommerce fashion company looks like…are you trying to be like ASOS or a local designer that sells online? Budget is anything from N50,000 to N50,000,000…where exactly do you lie in the spectrum?
My Suggestion
Understand the costs associated with running the offline version of the business you have seen
Understand the costs of running a typical online business
Wow. This is the main reason I love radar. So many insights and useful information. Thanks guys.
Thank you @spokentwice I appreciate the feedback. Your 2cents are worth so much more than that.
For some reason, the link you shared above isn’t working.
My sincere thanks also to @Sayo Your simple analogy and suggestion will go actually go a long way in helping me sort out major issues in my quest for world domination.
I will recommend you pay more attention to @xolubi’s view than mine if you can scale the technical hurdle associated with using Amazon developer features.
Amazon AWS has a lorryload of cool features, here is a screenshot of my console.
