Hello everyone, I’m Felix, a professional freelance blogger and internet marketer. I have a project idea about shaping the freelance industry in Kenya and providing a perfect environment for Small and Medium-Sized Businesses to showcase/sell their products online.
Budget Breakdown (approx)
We can connect you with the project owner if you would like to fund this project directly
Problem Statement
Our company is called dollarchain.store. Our purpose is to provide a swift and secure environment where anyone can trade online with peace of mind.
We also aim to help local freelance copywriters who are mostly students in Kenya to find a perfect platform for earning extra bucks. They (freelancers) can achieve this by helping vendors on dollarchain.store describe their products and even list them on their behalf.
The Pain Points
I learned about this idea through freelance blogging and website copywriting for international clients. The resources I interacted with and the lessons I got opened my eyes, and I realized that there’s a huge gap that should be filled in the Kenyan eCommerce landscape.
Here are the pain points:
• Lack of direct link between SMBs and their client base. There are plenty of small businesses in Kenya that trade in basic and luxury necessities like beads and jewelry, furniture, shoes, clothes, and arts and crafts supplies, etc.
Despite these products being high quality, the SMBs find it pretty hard to connect with the hopeful client base.
• For the success of businesses, these small and medium-sized businesses also need Virtual Assistants, but then there isn’t any better program that has been lined up in Kenya to help connect the business owners with the VAs.
• Finally, consumers also fear shopping online on multivendor online stores because of the fear of losing money in scams or bad items etc.
Solutions
• We aim to create a full-fledged multi-vendor e-commerce platform where anybody can sell anything online hassle-free–so long as the state legalizes the items.
• We also aim to create a talent market place inside the store that works like Fiverr. Here, sellers on dollarchain.store can find professional VAs in copywriters and others to help them in writing product descriptions for the items, list them on our store upload products and also respond to customer queries on their behalf if needed. (we also allow vendors to hire staffs)
• To solve the problem of payment insecurity, we have a built-in escrow payment protection service to help both the vendors and consumers.
• Finally, we’ve also been keen to put a live chat functionality where vendors can respond to client queries instantly.
Why We Exist
In building dollarchain.store, we got our inspiration from the fact that Kenya has a population of over 52 million people. Out of this, over 43 million have smartphones.
When it comes to internet access and online transactions, in most cases, mobile phone is the key.
There is also Mpesa, which is a mobile money payment technology. It makes it easy to process payments for both vendors and consumers, something which makes shopping online even more fun and easy.
Besides, popular international money transfer platforms like Payoneer, PayPal, and Skrill are all accessible in Kenya. This will, in particularly make it easy for international vendors/customers to sell or purchase beautiful artworks that Kenyans are known to produce–especially the fashionable Maasai pieces of jewelry and beads from the coastal region of Kenya etc.
A multivendor online store like this one also offers a variety and convenience that shoppers need when making purchases online.
Project Details
Our Target Audience
Our target audiences are SMBs and youths. Here’s why;
“There are about 7.41 million MSMEs in Kenya. Out of these, 1.56 million are licensed, while 5.85 million aren’t licensed. This high number of SMEs is a clear indication that the time is ripe to create a conducive platform that will make them productive both at the local and international levels.
Dollarchain was designed to fill a gap like this too.
Our target audience is also the youths because the most significant percentage of freelancers are youth. According to reports, over 53% of the Freelancer population worldwide are youths averging 18-22 years old.
Dollarchain will, therefore, provide a reliable platform for the creative Kenyan youth to tap into their creativity and potentials by writing captivating product descriptions for vendors in our store.
Those who can make art crafts like paintings, jewelry and beads also have an excellent platform to showcase their talents in the items they make.
Model Opportunities
In Kenya, there are less than five most recognized online stores. None of these stores, however, let everyone sell on their platform.
A perfect example is Jumia, where only the sellers that are based in Nairobi can sell on their platform. Besides, there isn’t any program that has been developed to streamline the vendors’ work.
They still have to go out of the store and find VAs elsewhere to help with specific tasks.
Here’s a breakdown of our model’s opportunities. We’re also different in that we have an auctions program on the website. From this auction program vendors can list items for auctions so users can bid on them.
It also makes it easy for merchants who trade in fast moving items eg the event organizers and artists who can sell tickets on the platform via the auctions functionality.
We’ll get revenue through;
• The talent marketplace where we earn a 10% commission from every completed project.
• 5% commission on every completed sale on the platform. (This will be after reaching 1500 subscribers. Before this the commission will be 10%)
• A monthly subscription fee of Ksh 1500 from vendors in our store. (We plan to introduce this after getting 1500 subscribers in vendor subscriptions.) This means that our revenue per month will be in the region of Ksh 1M from vendor subscriptions only.
• Courses on the platform eg, Dollarchain Academy, where we will charge a one-time membership fee of Ksh5,000. It will be optional, of course. To give the courses more weight, we’ll continuously partner with veteran internet marketers to share their knowledge with vendors on our platform through webinars and online workshops etc.
• Adverts like google ads etc. and paid promotions for featured products etc.
The Road Map
• PRE-LAUNCH
(PASE 0 2020)
We’re seeking to get in touch with social media influencers and utilize adverts to help us take the word
out about this product. (We’ve already started doing this anyway)
• THE CROWDSALE
(PHASE 1 2020)
After getting the word out about our brand and getting subscribers, we’ll give them a quick tour
of the product showing them how it will work.
• PLATFORM LAUNCH
(PHASE 2 2020)
On product launch, we’ll give vendors free access to powerful premium features for the first three months to get the first-hand experience of the product.
• MARKETPLACE
(PHASE 3 2020)
Apart from the sales platform, and the talent marketplace, we also have an auction
program where vendors can list items for quick sale. The auction program here was also
designed to make it easy for event organizers and show hosts to quickly sell event/show
tickets etc.
Customer Retention and Expansion Plans
The vendors on our platform have every freedom to manage their sales and respond to their clients effectively. Importantly, we also allow and encourage them to create their store policies and coupons to make their offers more attractive to consumers on the platform.
To keep the vendors happy and retain them on the store for the long term, we also have a plan of organizing yearly Dollarchain Awards where we will be rewarding the best vendors. The rewards will be based on their performances throughout the year and through an online voting system that will be done by consumers in the store.
For the expansion plans, we wish to bring in a leadership team that consists of CFO, CMO, and HR, etc. We also want to have a lively and big customer care team, which will include live chat for vendors on our store and the consumers.
Who We Are
Okendo Felix heads the team at Dollarchain. He’s the CEO and co-founded the business with Marion Mulinge. They’re helped by independent contractors who have been instrumental in designing, building, and maintaining the website.
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