“I wish there was a boutique just outside our campus entrance, I have just received an abrupt call for my internship interview and I can’t find a single presentable pair of trousers,” narrated Victor Kiplagat, about how it all started when TechMoran caught up with the two co-founders behind Stockport
According to him, he was up early one morning and got a call that he was scheduled to interview for a job but he couldn’t find the best outfit. Victor doesn’t explain what happened next but the only thing he remembers is the old adage ‘Necessity is the mother of inventions’ as that morning gave birth to Stockport, an online shipping platform for students.
How Stockport works
Stockport enables students to shop anytime at their own convenience and have the items delivered to their hostels or appartments within 2-3 hours.
To use the platform a student creates an account like on other ecommerce platforms, selects the items he or she wants then completes their orders and moves the items to the cart for checkout.
Focused only on youth, Stockport provides a range of products including popular shoe brands like Adidas, Nike and Vans and other local and international brands prefered by college students.
Currently, the startup serves students from Multimedia University of Kenya with a student population of more than 7000 but has intentions of expanding the business to three more neighbouring campuses before venturing to other schools in the other parts of the country.
“We are really working hard to ensure that our customers get the best experience while shopping with us to ensure that we retain our valuable clients as we gain more and build more on our traction” said Brian Baraka, co-founder of Stockport. “ We have put in place measures that would enable us reward our customers through a points gaining system where those shopping earn loyalty points which can be redeemed to other products or even rewarded as discounts” he added.
The two who are schoolmates and in their third year of education at Multimedia University of Kenya say they are sure that the path of entrepreneurship they have taken will solve problems prevailing in their day to day lives and that of others in the community. With the current 0.5 market penetration in the Kenyan eCommerce industry, Stockport is positive that this rate will progressively increase due to the increase number of internet users as the country embraces technology and therefore claim a good portion of the market share.
Since the platform is focused on students at the moment, it aims to train and educate as many campus students as possible to ensure they are conversant with online shopping to expose others to it. The training is still in introductory phases so the team is now focused on demonstrating how to buy online and how to pay or checkout.
Though cash on delivery is the most popular mode of payments on the platform, the team hopes to one day add crypto currencies such as Bitcoins. Stockport will generate its revenues from sales made through the products they have in stock and also will be able to provide a platform where other students to be able to sell quality and affordable products to potential buyers.