By JONAH NWOKPOKU

The founder/Chief Executive Officer of Fashpa.com, an exclusive online fashion merchant, Honey Ogundeyi has said that online retailers’ greatest competition is the offline market.
She stated this during an exclusively interview with Vanguard on the operations of Fashpa.com and the state and future of e-commerce in Nigeria.

“In terms of competition there is lot of sites still coming up online, offering fashion but our real competition is in the offline market where we see a lot of people going to buy from. So offline market can be considered a strong competition,” she said.

She noted that for Fashpa.com, as far as competition is concerned, “We basically benchmark ourselves against what our customers want. And I think the opportunity lies in serving real fashion conscious customers; and we are lucky that we are the first to offer fashion, the way that we do and mix both fashion e-commerce and fashion content.”

Explaining the offerings of Fashpa.com, she said: “Fashpa is an online fashion retailer. We are one of the leading fashion retailers in Nigeria and Africa. And basically, we are dedicated to providing our users with access to fashion and lifestyle brands. If you know Nigerians, and Africans in general, we love fashion, and lifestyle and what we are trying to do at Fashpa is give people better access to that.

“Our online platform sells clothes, footwear, and other accessories. We ship to all states in Nigeria. We also ship worldwide. What we do is we look at fashion trends, and we sell international high street brands that people are looking for. We also sell African brands. We also have our labels which is Fashpa.com. Apart from that, we also know that our customers are also interested in fashion contents, so we also give them fashion and lifestyle tips.”

She explained that Fashpa has been making significant efforts to blend the offline and online experiences just to serve and adapt the online shopping culture to the Nigerian market, through unique payment channels and prompt delivery systems.

“People still like the feeling of seeing and touching goods before purchase. So what we do is we try to understand and we allow our customers to get the item and we offer them cash on delivery. So you can send you up to three items in different sizes and you try them on and we will wait for you to try it on and then take it. So what we are trying to do is to bring a lot of things that people like from shopping offline to the online experience,” she said.

“And I think what is interesting about developing online platform is that you can’t just apply what happens in Europe and America to this market. So, you have to adapt it and make it relevant to our Nigerian and African customer,” she added.

Ogundeyi further explained that Fashpa’s idea of worldwide delivery was inspired by the need to get Nigerians and other Africans in the Diaspora, to stay connected with their culture through fashion.