Omowunmi Olalere is the chief executive officer of Dozen Price, an online retail store. In this interview with Endurance Okafor, she speaks on her business and what inspired it.
Tell me about yourself and your company.
I am the CEO of Dozen Price, one of the subsidiaries of my group company, Numero Groups, which also comprises Numero Homes and Numero Farms.
Dozen Price is an online retail store where we sell home groceries, household items, and personal care products on bulk purchases using a flexible payment pattern. This service is available to people in corporate organisations, especially those in paid employment.
Living in Lagos is hard enough, so stocking basic needs shouldn’t make it harder. Lagosians spend a chunk of their salaries on transportation. Why let shopping and its logistics eat into what’s left?
It is a platform that allows you to purchase products online, have it delivered to your doorstep, then pay instantly or later. This way, you don’t deprive yourself of essentials until payday. You also save money and time spent in traffic while trying to visit the supermarket.
Basically, Dozen Price is designed to make shopping easier for professionals and home-makers. Customers can choose from a wide range of items such as groceries, personal care, drinks, fresh meat, fish, vegetables, baby products, Nigerian ingredients and many more. Delivery will be made within 24 hours.
What inspired you to start Dozen Price?
Dozen Price is my passion. I love shopping and also realised early that there was a demand gap to be filled in providing people with stress-free shopping platform. I therefore resigned from the bank to start my own company.
I was inspired, first, because of my love for shopping, and second, my professional experience. The credit service initiative introduced into Dozen Price is as a result of what I practised while was in paid employment. I was offering credit facility, personal loans, salary advance and all that. So, the two mixed together. It was as a result of the mixture of passion and professional experience.
Why is Dozen Price only for the working class?
The flexible payment initiative is one of the qualities that distinguish Dozen Price from other online stores and supermarkets. When we say flexible payment, you can actually buy your own groceries, your own items and then pay after a certain time. You can pay at the end of the month or we give you two months to pay. So, it’s easier for us to use people in the paid employment so that we could guarantee our source of repayment from their salaries, from their employers. Their employers or the HR pay us at the end of the month. So, it gives our clients the comfort that they can actually come online, shop for their items and pay us at a later date.
We are currently working on a platform that will allow every salary earner to shop on our online store without us having any form of arrangement with their management or HR and still be able to enjoy the ‘buy now pay later’ services that we are currently offering our customers.
How does your ‘pay at the end of the month’ initiative work?
Our customers provide us with some form of information. Since we are registered with Corporate Affairs Commission (CRC), we do credit checks on them to find out their eligibility. What we do is to write proposals to corporate organizations. They call us for presentation and then they sell it to their staff members. Often times, companies approach us, especially those that have heard how our platform works. This helps to assist their staff to relieve them of stress from shopping in the ever-busy city of Lagos. So, we have not been having issues of default.
Considering it’s a new initiative in this part of the world, what is the level of reception?
It is promising and I think the selling point is actually the flexible payment. People love access to credit facility so it’s easier for them. That has been selling the brand more than having to just go online and pay upfront. If we had remained on ‘cash before service’, we probably wouldn’t have been where we are at this time, but the idea of having to pay afterwards has really helped us to promote the brand.
What are some of your expansion plans?
In 2019, we want to break even because we haven’t really got to where we want to be at the moment. We are still trying to stabilise because the company is still very young, but we’re making profits. So, we intend to achieve milestones at the end of 2019.
What advice do you have for other young businesses?
I just want to encourage them to be steadfast, to continue to do what they know best and seek knowledge because they need to research all the time. They need to try to brace up, they need to continue to strategise and at the end of the day.
