Like many of us, Angie Mokoena has a passion project that has great potential as a small business. What has been standing in her way is the triad of familiar reasons why more of us don’t convert our great ideas into viable start-ups — finances, know-how and time.
Last year, Angie launched an image consultancy to help others appreciate themselves and enhance their self-confidence.
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She is a firm believer in beauty on a budget, and that you don’t have to spend vast amounts of money to look great. With her natural flair for design and eye for detail, she hoped to launch jewellery, fashion accessory and clothing lines that offer clients affordable and gorgeous choices when it came to putting her style advice and coaching into practice.
Angie knew that such a business would work perfectly for her as an online shop. However, with a full-time job and a burgeoning part-time consultancy, Angie was strapped when it came to getting to grips with ecommerce. She was daunted by the challenges of payment gateways and fulfilling deliveries.
Efinity puts their money where their mouth is
When Angie came across the Efinity We Want You Online! Competition in May this year, she did not hesitate to enter.
The Naspers-owned ecommerce management services business offered one South African entrepreneur the chance to win a free and full ecommerce solution worth R75 000, and gave the undertaking they would get the winner online in just 24 hours.
With her jewellery and fashion accessory products already in stock, Angie met the entry criteria and she quickly emailed her 150 word motivation to Efinity.
“We loved both Angie’s story and her business concept,” says Nic Robertson, the head of new business development for Efinity, “She made the short-list without question, and when we chatted to her after that we were convinced we’d found a fantastic winner. That’s when the clock started ticking!”
24 Hours to ‘open doors’ online
The Efinity team went into action, consulting closely with Angie every step of the way. The product lines that would be her first offering were carefully selected by drawing on Efinity’s ecommerce experience. Photographs of the products were taken while all product details were captured on the inventory system and the physical products delivered and accepted into Efinity’s warehouse.
The website needed to be built from scratch with not only the secure payment and other back-end functionality installed, but a compelling front-end with a stylish brand and a seamless user interface.
Throughout the process of this end-to-end solution, Angie gained strategic insights into how ecommerce works and what is needed to make an online shop successful. Her prize includes Efinity’s comprehensive management of her payment system, customer care and fulfilment for the next three months.
A star is born
One day, she had boxes of stock; and the next, she had a fully functional and beautifully branded online shop, open for business across the globe. To Angie it was if her vision came into reality as Efinity made good on its promise and Angie Mokoena went live. The site has had over 1 000 visits in the first month.
Was it Efinity’s aim to make starting up on ecommerce look easy? “It always looks easy when you know what you are doing. But I think, we rather wanted to show just how possible ecommerce is,” says Robertson. “There is a great interest in ecommerce, and it offers vast potential to entrepreneurs.”
Robertson elaborates saying that it’s absolutely ideal for people, like Angie, who have fantastic passion projects that they can’t yet commit to on a full-time basis. “There’s a hunger and an ambition to get online, but people are still unsure about it. They have no idea how to go about it,” he says.
Another barrier is that the support you need to get up and running is mostly offered in such a disjointed way. Robertson argues that it makes it so much harder if you have to go here for a payment gateway, to someone else for a website design and then over there to get something else working on the site. “New ecommerce businesses need end-to-end solutions and strategic advice on how to be successful.”
But perhaps most of all, for us, this competition has been a way for us to demonstrate our absolute passion for getting businesses online. Despite the barriers to entry, ecommerce is growing exponentially. Online is where the customers are, and whether you’re a large corporation or an SME, that means it is where your business has to be.
The opinions expressed in this article are Efinity’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Ventureburn.
