According to Utibe-Abasi Roberts, he started Dazaar.com simply because he was unable to find a lot of products that he really loved and enjoyed and couldn’t find them easily in Nigeria.
“This was because some of the products were either not sold in the country entirely or I had to search really, really hard to find them. I often found myself spending hours haggling with a sales clerk and at the end of the day, I ended up with an item that wasn’t worth the price or had a very low quality. And need I say, I dare not return attempt to return it,” he told TechMoran.
He soon realised that a lot of people faced the same problem so together with a couple of friends, they started dazaar in October 2013.
Dazaar is an online shopping site featuring over 20,000 products with everything from fashion to electronics, baby products, automobile accessories and much more.
“Customers can suggest any item that they want us to feature on the site,” says Roberts. “We can then source those items from any part of the world and deliver that item to the customer in less than a week and at a very reasonable rate. Recently, a lady who had apparently seen an advert of a body massager somewhere, simply sent us an email to help her source that product which at the time was only sold in a few asian countries. We were able to get it delivered to her in less than five days at a very low price. She was absolutely shocked and has continued to shop with us ever since.”
Dazaar also lets anyone sell their products online through the dazaar Sellers Place. So anyone, say a student figures out that she can find a book that her colleagues need but is currently too pricey to buy in the school. Within minutes she may feature the book on dazaar.com, set her price, include images and the description of the book on Dazaar Sellers Place. Finally, she can share her products with other students through her social media pages, email marketing, SMS and other promotion methods available within the Dazaar Sellers Place. Her customers can easily purchase her featured products through her store on dazaar.com. it’s that easy. Dazaar calls it social shopping.
“We protect our customers by holding all payments in an Escrow account pending when the product has been delivered to the customer and he has confirmed that he is satisfied with the item. Where customers are not satisfied with the item, they have received they can return it with ease,” says Roberts.
Dazaar is still privately owned and funded and Roberts and his team are creating a brand and aim to grow it within a short period of time.
“Over the past two years we have noticed an increasing demand from online shoppers in other African states as such we will be customising our services specifically to meet their demands within the coming months,” says Roberts.
Online shopping in Nigeria is now so hot. Recently, Konga raised a significant amount of money to expand it’s service in the country. Rocket Internet’s Jumia is also growing steadily. Other firms such as Heels.ng are also growing day by day. It would be so interesting to see how the market is in the next one year as more and more people get online.