I am always happy to receive positive feedback for one of the articles that I wrote on the Oman Daily Observer. Even more happy if such a testimonial comes from a young Omani entrepreneur.
This time was Ms Hannan who wrote me on Linkedin. In her message she asked for guidance on how to start planning an e-commerce platform. In her idea there is a market opportunity around the sale and distribution of traditional Omani products, such as perfumes, jewellery, art and garments. My first thought was to ask her about the target audience. “Will you sell outside of Oman?” was my first question.
This is a crucial piece of information because it might change the plan completely. If the idea is to sell abroad, then solving logistics would be my first concern. However, she answered that she would first want to sell in Oman only. That takes away a lot of headaches for sure, but on the other hand, it substantially reduces the market size. The population of Oman is slightly in excess of 5 million, therefore the potential clients are limited. However, I am very much in support of niche initiatives with a focused target.
Despite the fact that Ms Hannan is aiming to sell within Oman, my second question was about logistic. “Do you have a logistics partner in mind?”. She answered that she does not have one at the moment. I would urge anyone planning to launch an online business to be “rock solid” with the delivery of the products and to have a crystal-clear policy when it comes to returns.
For example: delivery in 48 hours and return the product within a week. In my experience, finding supplier is easy and driving traffic to a website is an affordable task nowadays. What is really hard — and frankly that is where I see most businesses fail — is to deliver a state of the art service that secures returning customers.
If you browse the product reviews of any marketplace, you will find that more often than not, reviews talk about the service, not only the product received. For example, frequently the one-star reviews (one out of five being the worst) might read along this line: “The packaging was damaged, I asked for a refund and the seller is not responding!”.
When that happens, we can consider this a client lost to competitors. This is why, at the cost of sounding like a broken record, a logistic partnership is a must before we even start on-boarding suppliers.
My third question to Ms Hannan was: “How about licences?”. Another hot burning topic. It is essential to obtain all the required licences in order to start a specific business. In Oman we are blessed with endless support for entrepreneurs, and a clear system of licences that allows anyone to get started with a new venture in a reasonably short period of time. Compliance is key when operating any business.
Ms Hannan told me that she is going to keep me updated on her endeavours. I am genuinely looking forward to seeing her business idea taking place and attract the success that it deserves. To all of my reader in Oman I extend my support when it comes to discuss business ideas and plan for execution. [The columnist is a member of the International Press Association]
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