Nigerian entrepreneur, Bankole Bada has predicted that the COVID-19 pandemic will affect the Nigerian ecommerce space, and continually disrupt the sales ecosystem.
Following a boom in sales of technological and communications gadgets in 2020 after airport and travel bans were lifted during the first lockdown, Bankole said that the trend would continue for adaptive e-commerce businesses in 2021 as the Federal Government of Nigeria and state governments have newly introduced partial lockdowns to flatten the curve.
According to Bada, the Huntella sales went up by over 20 per cent 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.
“Another category that also witnessed a surge in orders is computer games and accessories. In 2020,The World Trade Organisation indicated that it is the right time for e-commerce to save the world economy and that it is to intervene with vigor and vitality and prove e-commerce of its importance and effectiveness in the field of trade and online shopping (WTO, 2020) ,” he added.
According to a report by Organisation for Economic Cooperation 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 per cent to 11.8 per cent), it spiked to 16.1 per cent 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 per cent to 20.3 per cent 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 per cent, up from 19.4 per cent in August 2019 and 17.3 per cent in August 2018,” he said.
Bankole further advised that 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 nonresponsive websites or systems be addressed by business owners to increase their chances of experiencing good sales this period.
Bada, who 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.
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