yea right, its common knowledge what software Jumia n co run on and what it costs or maybe what is cheap to me is expensive to you, next time don’t jump on threads like a know it all, there are more reasonable ways to join a conversation. Mr know Nothing.
You’ll be fine.
that’s better, have a nice day.
Disclaimer: I worked at Konga & currently lead development at Printivo
Hey @BloodyNigerian.
So you listed 8 dimensions to consider setting up a SuperMartNG.
I can only give you an idea of what’s involved. No figures.
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Cost of website design & hosting: The initial cost for this is not as high as its maintenance. You can contract this out but getting good dev that does not fuck up your future will be the challenge. Initial design and implementation decisions influences maintenance costs a great deal. If they use a Opencart or a Magento, then you’re stuck with dealing with those technologies. If your site is custom built, they you’re stuck with someone’s code that can be shitty and not be properly documented. Either you contract it out or you recruit developers in house, if you want to be around for a long time, my advice is to make sure you get at least one experienced engineer to work/partner with you that understands these things and their implications.
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Payment gateways: People are innovating in this area. Options are Interswitch (obviously), Paga e.t.c. But when you grow big, you want more control and need to have your hands deeper in the customers’ pockets. Konga innovated with KongaPay. Of course., you can’t get that. Right now, Paystack is an excellent choice and does not have a competitor in its space, yet. See this thread
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Warehousing: totally depends on how much stock you want to keep and the locations you want to service. But one thing is for sure, housing in Lagos is expensive, especially when you want a central and good location. Security and staffing are things to consider.
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Office space: same goes here. I’m not sure about how often you’ll need people to visit you. But that can influence your decision of where to get one.
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Inventory management: again, software. Use a third party solution or build one. What you need to have at the back of your mind is, the inventory management system and the front facing website have to be integrated. You really need that, at least, one experienced engineer that can work with you and advice you as you build your organisation
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Logistics & Delivery. Mehn … This, in my opinion, is the VERY crucial. You’d need to figure out of these services which one best works with your model. Consider cost and delivery time. Follow this thread
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Customer Service: Well, can’t say much here. But I know lots of training is involved. Customer feedback is important and you will change your processes in response to that.
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Advertising: advertising = strategy + shit load of money (considering lots of people are playing in that space in Nigeria right now)
When I say experienced, I mean someone who has been building software for some time and knows what it means to scale. Not the dictionary meaning of scaling, i emphasise on experience. For example: It’s easy for a developer to churn out code and create MySQL tables … but you have no idea the implication of not appropriately using MySQL indexes when data grows in that database. Unfortunately people only talk about adding resources when discussing scaling. Software Architecture design is crucial.
I like as you’ve broken things down. Just make sure you have a good team.
@blacquay … You can start with 20k hosting, but when you do serious business online and you have custom applications, you don’t go for 20k hosting … you go for servers and services that cost hundreds to thousands of dollars yearly. Depending out how big you are, you may need to spend up to tens of thousands every month. In ecommerce, you depend a lot on software and infrastructure.
@lawwyy … i hope this give you an idea of problems companies like Konga and Jumia work on every day? Konga currently uses magento for their front facing website but it doesn’t mean their developers go to work every morning, sit down with their legs crossed on the table and watch movies on their beautiful Full HD displays - as you may oviously think. See post 1 and post 2. Where do you think all that money is going to? You think $78.5M USD is being spent on holiday trips?
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Awwwwwww. Nice of you to come to my defence. I’m touched. I’m crying. Weryrey. 
Seriously people like you make it hard for me to join forums, why on earth are you cock sure assuming that I think konga developers come to work to sit down or that maintaining their software is cheap? It’s ridiculous and your kind needs to learn to join conversations, you don’t know me or know what I know, so why are you assuming? It’s a terrible thing if you don’t know and you need to watch it before it costs you more than you can afford. If you want to appear bright, please not around me. Sigh.
dude … did you notice the “may”? Your previous comments suggests so. I did not assume unwittingly.
@lawwyy
calm down and learn to learn when you need to.
Obviously in your dictionary means what? There’s nothing to learn in all you said and I’m only appalled by your approach and manner, you need to learn some courtesy,decency and your use of words. Like i said you don’t know me, if u did u wont have thought it smart to say all u said. Good day
Yo! I do not need to know who you are. And I don’t care.
It’s a fucking public forum. What you say is what matters. It determines the responses you get.
@lawwyy
I don’t understand the pressure to appear smarter than the next guy on a public forum, that’s just sad.
Thank you @yomexzo I appreciate the insight. Your breakdown will really help me a lot. Thank you for taking out time to do this. It means a lot to me. Thanks again.
Am new here, and am here to learn as well as contribute within my scope.
Over to the topic, setting up a biz organization like this is a project that require a written plan. So I will recommend you carry out out written feasibility or pilot study. Feasibility study is a written plan that serves as a guide towards achieving a desire result. This is how you go about it.
Steps to go…
- Google feasibility study, and this feasibility study has a format, and part of what you see in the format will serve as guidelines on what you want to do. When you see a genuine feasibility study format, you use data relating to the problem you want to solve.
- Solve each problem one after the other. Way to go here includes Google researches, interviews from resource person or technocrates and any ways you think you can get solution to that particular problem. Just like you gotten some quotas from the big bosses here.
- Evaluation, evaluate if the solution at hand will be able to give you your desired result, or you go back to drawing board to fish out the ish. You can evaluate yourself and seek evaluation from the big bosses.
- If after evaluation you are very sure the result you have is your vision. Carry on and implement. However, BE VERY SURE YOU GET IT RIGHT FROM FROM SSCRATCH, if you wish to get a good result that will suit your need. Hope this is somehow helpful.
@bloodynigerian you already have some key to work on. Like Web hosting, customer care, how to go about rendering service etc. Note, your search should not be limited to online search as some will have to be offline, eg visit on enquiries or searches that can’t be done offline. I will also recommend you read about success story on how those that have carry out related projects in past. Lastly, outside your financial strength and technical knowledge before during and after actualizing this, I think your passion for this has a long way to go
Tanx @azsocrate This was very very helpful.
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