Dear Product Seller,

Why Can't You Sleep at Night?

Forget what your gurus taught you - if you sell in Africa,

There are 4 "MADE IN AFRICA"  Reasons You are not Selling FAST

You started this "Product Selling" business with a lot of Motivations and High Expectations.

You sometimes look at your products, smile and tell yourself, "If I sell only half sef, better money don come be that".  

Now, 1,2,3 weeks, 6 months later -  nothing is really happening....

Instead; 

NOW PREPARE FOR THIS...

Retail Selling, Pay on Delivery, Horrible Delivery Options & Costly FB ADS 

are the monsters holding your product business

Early 2019, just before I had my second child, Maxwell, I decided I was going to start selling physical products online same thing you'll call E-commerce. 

As the “gurus” taught us, I did everything. 

I bought products from 1688.com, setup funnels, ran Facebook ads and quickly updated my profile as an “Importer”.

Sometimes, I will manage to get orders other times I don’t. 

See ehn, it didn't take long for me to realize that I was in a huge mess because of two monsters - Pay on Delivery and Retail Selling

Everyday was like a nightmare. 

First, I have to deal with many customers who will only pay on delivery. 

For this, a lot of unfortunate people will take advantage and cancel orders even while the rider is enroute.   

Some even say they weren't expecting item that day or they thought it was bigger or smaller or just find some crazy excuse to not buy. 

Mind you, I already spent money on Facebook ads. 

Sometimes, I would use dispatch riders.

Other times, elf delivery Agents especially for inter state orders. But I get to deal with rude, slow and dishonest agents.

Now on to retailing, you’ll agree that all of the troubles with delivery will have been worth it if I was selling in bulk and not the hand to mouth that I was doing.

The type that before I get the next order, I have already spent my small profits on ads, loads of call credit to call divers and leads many of whom never buy. 

Some "gurus" suggest that you provide some discount to entice bulk purchase but that doesn't really work for the most time. Besides, with all the monies spent on ads and delivery, how much discount really can I still afford to give up?

Also, as I was selling retail, I couldn’t really raise enough money for marketing. Hence I was getting minimal results unlike one who’ll spend a bit more. 

This continued until I became very broke and couldn't even afford to import again.

As the guy who never gives up, I took a loan from my wife’s cooperative but I got into serious debts because the cycle of misery and hand to mouth selling just continued. 

Please don’t call me a dullard because I know I was good with Facebook ads, I am a website designer so I was good with funnels. I would even consider myself a good sales man too. 

So the problem wasn’t in all of that.

It was on using the regular systems that every guru teaches on how to do ecommerce in Nigeria.

These are real problems that no one is talking about and everyone is groaning and dying in silence.

I eventually saw that even the struggling Jumia that does retail could only have been able to stay alive because they had enough funds to run marketing and everything. 

I finally realized that small product sellers like you and I cannot survive the retail POD model. 

This fundamentally is the reason, many ecommerce entrepreneurs fail and I was just in line too until something happened.

I was arrested by SARS, yes, the now disbanded Special Anti Robbery Squad while making deliveries in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. 

What was my offence? 

I was simply in same vehicle with some alleged Internet Fraudsters, popularly known as "Yahoo boys"… and when they saw my chats in Chinese with my Chinese suppliers, I was quickly labeled a "yahoo boy". 

I was taken to the station and consequently, I couldn't continue deliveries for that day. 

But Becky, one of the customers who wanted the item kept on calling. She texted me on how badly she wanted the item delivered that day.  

As you’ll expect, I lied. Yes I didn’t want her thinking I was a fraudster, so I lied that something came up. 

How this story ended would you make call me a Scammer so I will skip it till later BUT...

This incident + every other troubles I highlighted made me come to a conclusion - if I must continue with this business, IT HAS TO BE WHOLESALE not RETAIL.  

Now you're probably wondering; 

Why Sell in BULK & not RETAIL?

& can everybody sell in BULK - who'll do retail?

Here's my Argument backed with Facts

Everyone who sell online should Sell in BULK.

That's the only way product selling can really make you money fast.

The only persons that retail works for are people who sell offline like my mum.

Why?

My Mum runs a small kiosk.

She doesn't bother about Pay on Delivery

She doesn't run ads 

She only sits and wait for people to come and buy and she looses nothing if they don't buy when they come...

But that's not the same for you selling online - the dynamics do not favour small retail sellers like you unless you're Jumia.

Even Jumia struggles with Retail - go check why their earliest investor Rocket internet left.

In any case, you can't argue this one...

With the retail system you do, can you sell 900 pcs of a N7,800 product like the one I sold the 4th week I started selling in BULK? 

You'll agree that, even if I have travel miles myself to deliver my goods, I won't mind provided its bulk sale. I mean 30pcs, 50pcs, 100pc, etc...

Or is it not the same troubles and money to sell 1pc that'll spend on selling more?

If statistics has shown that 3 out of 5 orders fails, this means if I do wholesale, the 2 successful ones will cover the losses from the other 3 not so?

You sef check am...

If I ask you now to choose between selling retail that is bit by bit and selling in bulk quickly.

I can definitely guess that you’ll want to sell in bulk fast most especially when you get paid upfront. 

I've done both of them.

The difference is like Night and Day.

Selling in BULK is sweet business… for a lot of reasons

But it's easier said than done, otherwise you still won’t be struggling with retail selling especially with the expensive ads that you run so;