Second wave of pandemic will herald boom in e-commerce sales – Huntella CEO
Nigerian entrepreneur, Bankole Bada has predicted more technological and communications gadgets, with the COVID-19 pandemic that has affected the Nigerian e-commerce space, and has continued to disrupt the sales ecosystem.
This is following a boom in sales of these gadgets in 2020 after airport and travel bans were lifted during the first lockdown.
Bankole, Chief Executive Officer of Huntella, an online accessory company, opines that the trend will continue for adaptive e-commerce businesses in 2021 with the Federal Government and state governments’ introduction of partial lockdowns to flatten the curve.
Bada noted that Huntella sales have gone up by over 20% in 2021 with an increase in orders for laptops, speakers, web cameras and video call support equipment due to many people having to work and/or school from home. Adding that: “another category that also witnessed a surge in orders is computer games and accessories.”
On loopholes that might affect an increase in sales by e-commerce businesses such as poor logistics management systems; traffic in major Nigerian cities, epileptic internet services and non-responsive websites or systems, Bankole advised that these should be addressed by business owners to increase their chances of experiencing good sales this period.
In 2020, the World Trade Organisation (WTO) indicated that it is the right time for e-commerce to save the world economy and that it is to intervene with vigour and vitality and prove e-commerce of its importance and effectiveness in the field of trade and online shopping.
According to a report by Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the resulting shifts from brick-and-mortar retail to e-commerce are likely significant across countries.
For example, while in the United States the share of e-commerce in total retail had only slowly increased between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2020 (from 9.6% to 11.8%), it spiked to 16.1% between the first and second quarter of 2020.
The development is similar for the United Kingdom, where the share of e-commerce in retail rose from 17.3% to 20.3% between the first quarter of 2018 and the first quarter of 2020, to then rise significantly to 31.3% between the first and second quarter of 2020.
Similar changes are also observed for other regions, including the People’s Republic of China (hereafter China), where the share of online retail in total accumulated retail sales between January and August 2020 reached 24.6%, up from 19.4% in August 2019 and 17.3% in August 2018.
Bada started business in 2010 selling fashion apparel and rendering Facebook marketing services then evolved to selling Apple iPods, Blackberry phones and gradually expanded the Huntella offering over time.
Today, Huntella caters to a broad number of clients ranging from undergraduates to upwardly mobile individuals and celebrities.
