We realized that Ringier’s Kiramu is no longer and Ady.ng had taken it’s place and we thought the rebranding was horrible but we were wrong.
Speaking to TechMoran, Christopher Bjergmose, Project Lead Ady.ng for Ringier Nigeria said the firm tried to avoid calling the move rebranding by all means possible.
“First of all we have tried to avoid calling it a rebranding. Kiramu was to a large extent a way to test the Nigerian market and learn how to optimise our local model and was a relatively small platform.This is why we only mentioned rebranding to our existing users before launching marketing campaigns, but tried to avoid the connection with Kiramu after going full scale as to not create confusion about brand awareness for all the new users that we are bringing in.
The name Ady is a matter of taste and was chosen after the firm found that many people had difficulties spelling Kiramu and wanted to introduce a simpler name which was chosen based on rigorous testing.
As described we are a classic classified platform but we also want to make an effort to constantly adapt to the Nigerian market and what works in Nigeria.
“In Nigeria there is a large number of small merchants often selling imported new or slightly used products from Europe or the US, especially cars and electronics. These merchants are not big players, but we provide them a platform to sell their products without a fee,” said Bjergmose. “Saying many Africans don’t want to visit a site with both old and new items is not completely true in the case of Nigeria. Many consumers find western used products to be more attractive due to problems with fake imported products.”
That being said it is a challenge in other categories such as clothing where people don’t want to buy 2nd hand unlike Europe.
Bjergmose tells us that at markets in Nigeria you will find that merchants sell used as well as new products. Ady is basically an online reflection of offline Nigerian markets and is for both small merchants and individuals who might not have the same online sales channels as larger retailers.
He says there is room for ady even if it’s a traditional classified platform as it takes the quality of ads and scamming seriously which Bjergmose says the Nigerian market suffers highly but by controlling ads meticulously, the firm aims to reign in on fraud and aim at having the most quality listings in the market than its competitors.