@Joyce let me put it like this. I am not in Kenya, here we kinda do a lot online from paying utility bills, to banking, to shopping. Personally I read a lot (tech books)and at times my first instinct when I hear of a good book i go online maybe amazon, barns n noble etc, place an order and wait for it to be delivered to my door. If I am throwing out wild cards and not sure which "next book to buy" then I most probably dash over to Barnes n Noble and brush through and see what I like. N'way bout facebook, i cannot see the Ads you guys see in Kenya, My Facebook serves me local Ads (basically Florida), I love scuba diving so most of my ads are all about diving in the florida keys, cozumel etc, So for me there's no telling what ads pop up on your end. About fashion, actually My two current web based projects this year are e-commerce fashion websites which as a matter of fact are being built from scratch based on an Engine I have developed.. of course they basically accept paypal and credit card payments... no M-pesa, Zap mambo jambo coz those are irrelevant on this end. Am not authorized to distribute the link yet but here is one older project www.dillonave.com I did late last year with early versions of the Engine. Fashion is not the next big online product here. Fashion has been online here since for ever. So again I dont know what the Kenya scene is like now. My point is this, if I had something in mind to know what trends are out there, this list gives me an idea of what is on the ground... so say if I have this big idea I wanna share and partner with kalahari, or say a venture capitalist from here (and they are many), you would need to give straight informtion and that means proper projections, correct numbers, credible data and so on and all. Coz surprisingly you say you move millions of products a month? I know my maths... (funny thing is my bain enjoys processing numbers) thats definitely Bull. Here's why... To successfully sell a product am guesing minimumim 4 page views. assuming every user purchases two items (this is being generous) (1,000,000/4)/2 that is... 125,000 unique visitors a month. remember a good chunk of this will be one time visitors lets look at page views. if 10% of page views generate sales then 1,000,000*10 millon page views or closer to 100,000,000 hits a month. to get that kind of genuine traffic, you will attract a bit of mischief from east block counties and hacking attempts so lets double the traffic to cater for all that... Wow 20 million page views... or 200 million hits...... So now I am thinking.... Dedicated Servers, Database scaling, Security, Performance etc on the technology side Distribting millions of products door to door... thats a serious logistic problem there... how many packages can a delivery guy distribute in a day, consider traffic jams, packaging blah blah. hmmm I wonder. DO YOU NOW SEE WHY MY BRAIN IS ITCHING? So for me its not about how many e-commerce sites there are in kenya, frankly we need as much as we can get but all I want is to know a true figure of the volumes of products moved and how the technology to process high volumes and the logistics including human resources... stuff like that. Its not the revenue I am interested in. Coz when you guarantee 5 days shipping and you sell millions a month, you had better be knowing what you are doing. Steve Obbayi ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joyce Lukwiya" <lukwiyajoyce@gmail.com> To: "Skunkworks Mailing List" <skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke> Sent: Thursday, August 19, 2010 3:20:49 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] E-commerce in Kenya - Increased growth @steve obbayi The e-commerce space in kenya is expanding a lot of business are opting to sell their products online. Just a look at some of the ads in facebook you realize that fashion is next big online product. The competition is good, more players, more choice for the consumer and of course the different payment options (mpesa, zap, pesa pal, credit cards). Other new sites in the e-commerce space www.nimepata.com , http://aceimagestrategies.com . On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 10:15 AM, [ Brainiac ] < arebacollins@gmail.com > wrote: kalahari gets about 5,724 pageviews a day. thats like 150k pageviews a month. I doubt they can move a million cause that would imply selling about five items on each pageview. It is an impressive figure though. On Wed, Aug 18, 2010 at 8:59 AM, Willie Ong'uti < williexm@gmail.com > wrote: @Albert, I have tried mzoori.com and actually u need to register to access. The upside is that the registration doesn't require much details (about 3 things). Plus there is no delay with confirmation of stuff like emails. I accessed the registration through this link http://www.mzoori.com/iam Or better still i have sent you a 'mzoori Invite' :-) On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:21 PM, Steve Obbayi < steve@sobbayi.com > wrote: As @Willie has put it, @Joyce where do you think you fare with your competition and how do you compare with other global e-commerce websites in terms of volume of product and NOT pricing of products? Steve Obbayi SKYPE: sobbayi http://sobbayi.com http://blog.sobbayi.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Willie Ong'uti" < williexm@gmail.com > To: "Skunkworks Mailing List" < skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke > Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 10:15:03 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] E-commerce in Kenya - Kalahari.co.ke Hi Joyce, Thats commendable, i just wanted to know how you are fairing on with the competition from ecommerce portals like www.mzoori.com . I got this link from facebook www.mzoori.com/iam On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 5:10 PM, Joyce Lukwiya < lukwiyajoyce@gmail.com > wrote: @steve yes we actually move these products, books are the biggest movers on Kalahari at the moment. As I said you check out our prices. Joyce On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 4:58 PM, Steve Obbayi < steve@sobbayi.com > wrote: @Joyce, You've said all this about kalahari.co.ke including offering millions of books, music DVD's etc.... really???? In short you havent answered the question on whether you have the critical mass from Kenya or East Africa for that matter.... Just want clarification. So! Do you actually move these "millions of products a Quarter, let alone a month"? Steve Obbayi SKYPE: sobbayi http://sobbayi.com http://blog.sobbayi.com ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joyce Lukwiya" < lukwiyajoyce@gmail.com > To: "Skunkworks Mailing List" < skunkworks@lists.my.co.ke > Sent: Tuesday, August 17, 2010 9:48:35 AM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern Subject: Re: [Skunkworks] E-commerce in Kenya - Kalahari.co.ke Hi John, I believe you have not heard of Kalahari.co.ke . Kalahari.co.ke is a leading online retailer, offering millions of books, music, DVDs, games and more at the click of a mouse. With top-selling products, local payment options which include M-PESA , door-to-door delivery, wish list facilities, vouchers, and free gift-wrapping, kalahari.co.ke offers convenient shopping! We are giving irresistable discount on all our shop categories. Log on to www.kalahari.co.ke and check it out for yourself. Joyce Lukwiya Online Shop Manager Kalahari On Tue, Aug 17, 2010 at 4:30 PM, John Maina < mwasjunior@gmail.com > wrote: I used to hypothesis that the reason we don't have a vibrant e-commerce infrastructure in Kenya was the lack of payment solutions and lack of "critical mass" of people online..These two problems have been solved yet we still have nothing on the ground. So my question to y'all experts is what is hindering e-commerce in Kenya? 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