Jumia merchants acknowledge business boom through online platform

The ability to scale business attracted Chinonso Olejeme and Trust Osunde to register on Jumia as part of 10,000 vendors nationwide. While Chinonso deals on household electronics, Osunde who believes in improving Nigerian youth mind-set is managing partner of 21 Attire dealing on female wears. Both confessed that partnering with 6- year old Jumia has assisted the growth of their business as sales have increased phenomenally. In this interview, Chinonso, 2013 graduate of economics from Unilag talks more on Jumia partnership and business environment. Excerpts.

Could you explain your role as vendor in Jumia value chain?

Ihave been partnering with Jumia as merchant in the last 3 years. Since then, it has been a success story even though there have been some challenges.

Could you compare business now and before you joined Jumia?

I have brick and mortar store in Ejigbo and Alaba in Lagos selling household electronics to resellers and end users. Prior to joining Jumia, we were doing well but now we are doing greater. Jumia is magic and phenomenal because our sells have skyrocketed by about 400% in the last three years. We sell what we have in the offline business and this has limitation in terms of consumers accessing them, but with Jumia there is big magnitude of exposure to consumers. Sometimes we find it difficult to cope with sales. The question is not about sells but how much can the seller handle.

Six years ago, buying online was not popular, so were there hesitation to joining Jumia for online sales?

Before joining Jumia, I had smaller online shop but it was not like Jumia. Therefore there was this hesitation to joining Jumia initially. In my online shop we hardly make big sales but when I joined Jumia, sales started increasing. On delivery of the goods, I have some people working with me and what we do is to push the ordered goods to Jumia hub and the hub delivers the goods.

What kind of support do you enjoy from Jumia?

Jumia has supported my business in terms of sales. My income has grown in the last 3 years. Jumia is God sent to my business. In terms of loan, there is Jumia loans where the vendor secures loans as little as 4% per month flat. With that loan I am able to source for more goods and grow my business.

With your growing volume sales, have you been able to attract more businessmen into Jumia partnership?

Some of my relations are already on Jumia. I have four different subsidiaries and they are on Jumia and in Alaba most sellers are on Jumia.  On quality, mind you that there are lots of brand in the market and before you upload any item, it must meet Jumia standard. The issue of quality is already taken care of before it is uploaded. If you are caught in malpractices, you will be penalised or lose your license.

The online trading is not growing as much as it should, perhaps due to data cost and traditional behaviour of consumers who want touch and feel, where do you see online business in the next 10 years?

Many people may not shop online now but as time goes by, many will shop online. The business has not really taken off. Really joining Jumia has been phenomenal to my business. Prior to joining Jumia we were making about N300,000 but now we make about N2m in a month as profit.

What are those challenges you encounter in the online trading?

We have challenges and this is partly because of the environment. Abroad, there is return policy where a customer sees it and rejects. Jumia also has 7 days return policy. As a vendor this is big challenge to us as some of these items are not returned in good condition when they left the shops. Another challenge is that sometimes some customers don’t show up to pick their orders. There is also the challenge of some customers saying that they were trying the system to check whether it works as they really didn’t want to buy anything. These challenges are not good for business and Jumia is working on them. Sometimes, Jumia has to blacklist some customers.

On price variation, especially during Black Fridays, how do manage the cut in prices as a business?

Price is key to any business. When a customer goes to Jumia, the customer can see all prices of a product from one spot unlike offline shop where the customer has to move around comparing prices. Price is important to us as the products are the same. On Black Fridays, Jumia subsidises some of these products and this is a way of saying thank you to customers. On Black Fridays, we are equally encouraged to reduce profit margins to draw more customers.

Government policies are important to businesses anywhere, where do you think government can come in through policies and regulations to enhance this business?

It is quite easy to set up your business or be part of Jumia family but many people have challenge of funding to source goods to sell. Government can partner with Jumia to give loans and the beauty of it is that the applications of the loans are monitored.