We are giving value to our customers- Afaedor

Raphael Afaedor is the CEO of Supermart.ng, an online supermarket that delivers groceries and everyday essentials across Lagos state.  In this Interview with CHINWE AGBEZE, Afaedor says Nigerians should purchase locally made products to grow the naira.

How did Supermart fair in 2015?

We were growing about 15 to 20 percent when we started the business in May 2014. Towards the end of the year, we started growing faster and the biggest jam we saw was 60 percent in November 2015. Since that time, when the economic crisis started kicking in, our growth is around 20/25 percent month to month now, which I think is impressive given the difficulty in the overall microeconomic situation.

Supermart is growing in spite of the economic downturn. What are you doing differently?

We have been able to survive the economic contraction because we saw it coming. We understood very quickly what was happening; moved ahead of the situation and this has really helped us to grow.

We are heavily promoting made in Nigeria products because we read the situation and understood that this was a situation that was going to linger. We saw also that people’s earnings were going to be constrained from the overlapped salaries and prices of goods have gone up as well. There’s nothing the customer can do than to change their buying behaviour. What we started doing was to generate visibility on all our locally produced products. Hence, we encouraged customers to buy Nigerians products to grow the naira.

How do you source your goods?

We partner with all the leading supermarkets and open markets in order to deliver to customers. People are able to go online to select from over 70,000 everyday essentials and grocery items. They pay and select their delivery day. We deliver same day as apt as 3 hours.

What happens when you fail to deliver at the stipulated time?

If anything should happen, we inform the customer immediately this is brought to our attention. For instance, in the case of an unexpected traffic, we will immediately inform the customer and plan accordingly.

I can tell you we deliver 99 percent of our items, if not all, within the delivery window our customers select.

How are your prices compared to physical stores?

We charge at the same price we get from the supermarket. What we have done is to negotiate a discount on every purchase. We are passing value to the customers and we are able to give them wholesale prices, even though they are buying retail.

When shopping online, issues of trust are bound to arise. How do you manage such?

Banners and communications that are on the site make you realise that you are dealing with professionals. I think the onus is on us to be expert in order to allay people’s fears; it is on us to make people realise that they are dealing with someone who would keep their promises.

What challenges do you face?

One major challenge is talent. Finding people and getting them to deliver quality service on a very consistent basis is one of the key challenges. Also, getting people who have been trained. We recruit a lot straight from the university and focus on training them to be able to get them to be a Supermart person.

In every business there are elements of risk. How is Supermart coping with cyber risks?

We have a solid technology team that handles that. The salient issue is that people should understand how card technology works. When a customer allows someone else have access to their card, or token, their service provider cannot be responsible for that. Outside this obscure or very rare instance, everything else is taken care of.

Do you see growth opportunities for e-commerce in Nigeria?

I think all the dynamics have pointed to the fact that e-commerce is going to grow in Nigeria for the simple reason that more and more people are becoming technology savvy. The reality is that people spend so much time in traffic, which gives them the opportunity to do these things. They also don’t find everything in one place and they have to go to multiple supermarkets to shop. So, all of these in my opinion would drive the growth of ecommerce and that is what we are seeing.  As said earlier, we grow about 25 percent month on month now, which by any imagination on a monthly basis is a rapid growth. So, I don’t expect that to change. I think the market would grow even further.

I think it is going well but the most important thing is for us to continue sourcing local to be able to find ways of giving customers value because today’s customers want to spend less time in traffic; spend less money on fuel to be able to get their groceries delivered at a minimal cost of delivery and also find the best quality at the most affordable price. If we continue doing that, I believe we are going to keep growing.

CHINWE AGBEZE