Online shopping portal WantItAll.co.za has expanded into South America to tap into a growing market.
Justin Drennan, one of the company's three founders, says it has launched an online store in Brazil, which is a Portuguese-language equivalent of its South African offering. He predicts it will be bigger than the local operation within a year.
Brazil is being used as the company's stepping stone to expand into South America. Drennan says it aims to expand across the continent, and will start by moving into neighbouring countries.
The company is now constructing sites for Argentina and Chile. WantItAll expects to have these live early next year. However, its expansion plans will take time to come to fruition. “We are keeping it small on purpose; we don't want to grow too quickly,” says Drennan.
WantItAll claims to be SA's largest online store, with over 14 million products on offer.
Exciting market
Its Brazilian site, CompreUS, is Portuguese for “Buy US” and sources its products from US giant Amazon.com. The operation is managed from SA and run by a team in Sao Paulo.
Drennan says the Brazilian Web site has been operational for about six months now, and within three months it was already reaching 10% of the company's South African revenue. Its local site, which has been running for three years, receives 11 000 visitors a day, he says.
CompreUS is already self-sustaining and has over 50 000 visitors a month. “Brazil is the most exciting emerging market in the world and its scope and size are overwhelming,” says WantItAll co-founder Terence Murphy.
Last month, JSE-listed publishing company Naspers said it had bought 91% of Brazilian e-commerce group BuscaPe.com, for $342 million.
Antonie Roux, head of Internet at Naspers, said: “BuscaPe gives us a fast-growing business in line with our e-commerce focus. It's a diversified Internet platform: a whole spectrum of business models within the e-commerce value chain across core Latin American markets.”
The company invested in Latin America as the region is home to about 550 million people. Its decision was also influenced by the fact that consumers are benefiting from rising disposable incomes and have little debt.
Related story:
Naspers goes Latin
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