Nigerian online groceries startup, Supermart.ng added a wholesale store to its platform earlier in the month, a move suggesting Supermart was moving up the supply chain and edging towards an enterprise business model. Perhaps even cutting out partnership with its partner stores to store its own inventory.
It turns out the startups is model-agnostic. “We think less about models and more about solving our customers’ problem,” Raphael Afaedor, the company CEO told TechCabal.
“We do have a lot of admin managers of corporations – large and small, restaurants and hotel managers as well as resellers buying from us,” Raphael said. “So one could argue that we are doing B2B. But in reality, we see them as customers who are coming to us because we are solving a real problem they have.”
Supermart says it is taking as many orders from corporates as it is taking from private customers, and while it doesn’t volunteer information on whether this is a data-driven decision, what the company is doing, it seems, is creating a solution for shopping problems Nigerians are yet to realise exist and can be solved in this manner.
“The Supermart wholesale shop is another way we are solving the grocery shopping problem for our customers,” Raphael said.
Supermart which has partner stores listed on its network will also continue the relationship. Cutting these relationship, Raphael explains, would not allow the company solve the problem it set out to solve in the first place. “If we carry stock, we will limit our offering, so we will continue working with our supplier partners, enabling them to focus on getting the best brands available while we focus on getting the items into the hands of the customer conveniently.”
But the important question is, ‘are there significant savings for buyers?’ Shoppers can simply buy more units of an item rather than a whole pack. Moreso, bulk buying will be leading to heavier packing which might end up drawing on a higher markup in logistics rather than a saving.
Raphael says there are significant savings. From some bulk purchase, he says, there is “up to 25% saving.” “Some bulk items” is vague, and it’s likely the bulk item savings don’t spread as generously to all products. A 25% price cut on an item is a pretty good deal, Nevertheless.
This is the second cool add Supermart is sewing on its services in 2015. Earlier in the year, the company introduced the Amazon Prime-esque Supermart Prime that allows users pay a one-off delivery charge for a full month, rather than pay delivery at each checkout.
Perhaps to assure the wholesale store is for regular joes, Supermart is giving out a coupon code for readers on TechCabal. “TechCabal readers can test the service out for themselves by using coupon code TECHCABAL to get a N1,000 discount,” the company told us.
The coupon code is valid for one month from July 24. Yeah, sorry we are getting the word out late.
