Online Retail Click, click. Ching, ching.
Sears and Kmart. Borders. Filene’s Basement. Circuit City. The grim rollcall of names of American businesses put out of, well, business by a killer combo of the Great Repression and the rise – 15% in 2009 – of online retail. In South Africa, a less mature market, this rise is nothing short of vertical: 30% in 2011, for a total of R2,6billion – a .36% drop in the ocean of SA’s total retail spend of R561billion, but are you saying you’d rather not have some of that? According to online guru (his shirts don’t have collars, that’s how much of a guru he is) Arthur Goldstuck, this is partially because many of SA’s web users have been online for five years plus and are itching to spend, and also because so many websites have made it so much easier for them to do so.
Comment: Now, logistics providers, if you could just get our delivery times down to something a little more dare we say first world, there may be something in it for you.