Dubai: Souq.com, the region’s largest online retailer, is bringing America’s biggest shopping day — Black Friday — to the region again in bid to give a shot in the arm to e-commerce.
Souq brought Black Friday to the Middle East for the first time in 2014 but christened it as ‘White Friday’ in respect to Friday being the day of worship, gathering, friends and family in the Arab world.
Black Friday, the Friday after Thanksgiving (November 27), has emerged as the busiest shopping day of the year in the US, with retailers offering huge discounts and attractive time-constraint deals.
A similar concept in China, known as Singles Day on November 11, saw the online giant Alibaba generate more than $14 billion worth of e-commerce sales in just 24 hours.
Usually, the shopping day is for 24 hours but Souq is holding the event for three days — November 25-28.
Ronaldo Mouchawar, CEO and co-Founder of Souq.com, told Gulf News that extending the event for three days will help us get more partners and products, and help us ship faster and handle the traffic.
Last year, Souq handled the traffic with 10,000 servers and this year they are using 20,000 servers to keep the infrastructure in place to serve the event.
“We get 45 million visits a month and we are hoping to get tenfold increase in visits during the event. We expect a massive sell out on the first day with over one million products on the site. Last year, we sold 285,000 products and hopes to double its sales value and units this year,” he said.
“We are very competitive when compared to Amazon as we have the same partners and are a localised company. Shipping is very cheap and there is a return policy in place, warranty and cash on delivery options,” he added.
Souq is offering 10,000 exclusive deals compared to 2,000 last year and predicts to sell two items per second.
Mouchawar said that mobile phones contribute more than 50 per cent of its total sales. Saudi Arabia is a bigger market than the UAE due to its population size.
In bid to further drive credit card adoption, customers who make a purchase using their MasterCard credit card will receive a further 10 per cent off all deals. The site is offering discounts between 25 and 70 per cent.
With more people shopping online, e-commerce sales are poised to hit record numbers in 2015, growing 11 per cent over last year to reach $83 billion in sales globally.
According to Adobe’s 2015 online holiday sales forecast, announced recently, Black Friday is predicted to reach $2.7 billion after Cyber Monday’s $3 billion. Mobile will drive the majority of online shopping visits (51 per cent) for the first time on Thanksgiving Day, and mobile shopping will also replace desktop shopping on Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
Online retailer may look into more fund raising after event
Dubai: Souq.com said it is too early for an IPO (initial public offering) and its focus is on innovation through technology.
“We need a lot of work internally to get there [IPO]. It will be great to have an IPO and be the first Arab internet company with an IPO. It is something we would like to think about,” said Ronaldo Mouchawar, CEO and co-Founder of Souq.com.
The online retailer raised $75 million from Cape-Town based Naspers last year and then raised $150 million from US-based Tiger Global Management this year.
At this stage, he said that Souq is in a good shape. Nasper and Tiger are anchor investors.
“As we exit White Friday and based on how things evolve, we may look into more fund raising,” he said.
— N.K.C.
