When I was a child, an uncle, acting on an entrepreneurial impulse, set up a `healthy living` mail order business run from a tiny shop in the middle of Pretoria.
This was way before Verimark, but the blueprint differed only slightly. Like all mail order businesses, it sold something for everyone, and as in the case of most infant start-ups, almost everyone in the family was roped in to help in some way or another.
It`s an incredibly simple and efficient way to shop, and for obvious reasons, goes somewhat easier on consumers` wallets.
Basheera Khan, London correspondent, ITWeb
The uncle, a keen photographer, provided the catalogues with images; some good-looking cousins tried their hand at modelling several products, and various other relations did their bit in the way of viral marketing through word of mouth. And for a time, everything was coming up roses.
Then the business succumbed to the corruption that had by then begun festering in the bowels of key South African systems. With an increasingly fallible postal service, a failing economy and uncertain political climate, the business` demise was a sad inevitability.
It failed for precisely the same reasons that the mail order business boomed in the US, the UK and pretty much anywhere else with a halfway dependable infrastructure.
Cut to 20 years later, and while the mail order industry is long-since established and steadily growing in SA, it has leapt an evolutionary notch in the UK.
Money-spinners
Most retailers that operate in the UK have extensive catalogues, which, though they provide the bedrock for these stores` e-commerce ventures, are in and of themselves huge money-spinners in mail and telephone orders.
Argos is one example of the next generation of mail order. It is one of the UK`s largest non-food retail chains, and reports sales of over lb2 billion. It considers itself a leading retailer for toys and small electrical appliances, and a significant player in markets as diverse as DIY, gardening, consumer electronics and furniture.
The buying process is a simple enough plan; provide catalogues free of charge to anyone who feels like lugging them home, to browse through (and with any luck, place orders from) at one`s leisure, online or through a call centre.
To cater for those who would like to purchase smaller items, or who haven`t the patience to wait for delivery, Argos provides catalogues and ordering facilities in store as well. Each catalogue is within easy reach of a nifty little gadget where one keys in the catalogue number of the sought-after product. It queries the store`s warehouse database (the Argos outlets are 90% warehouse, 10% customer facing area), returns availability information and confirms pricing.
If one decides to buy something, one simply fills in an order slip, pays for the goods, takes a number and waits while they are collated and despatched by any number of Argos people working in the warehouse.
It`s an incredibly simple and efficient way to shop, and for obvious reasons, goes somewhat easier on consumers` wallets. In fact, it`s so simple, I can`t think of any plausible reason why South African businesses haven`t picked up on this offshoot of the mail order business.
Stores that could milk the model for all its worth - Game, Morkels, even Totalsports - have the databases. Some even have the warehouses, while others could easily better utilise the space they have with a model such as this.
Of course, it would take some acclimatising for business and consumers alike, but in all honesty, it`s not a huge leap for any business to take. In the long run, it`s a streamlined way of making the sell, while at the same time increasing the number of sales made across various channels. And after all, that`s what business is all about, right?
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