“Egole…. welcome to the cyberspace shopping site created in an organic environment for seamless business transaction between merchants and customer.

Courteville Business Solutions Plc developed this robust, flexible and secure platform as a one stop business community in cyberspace, which affords everyone the opportunity to buy and sell goods and services globally via the internet. It is indeed a well thought through platform that guarantees both the merchants and consumers convenience in usage and security”.

Source: http://shopping.autoreglive.com

In this interview with PETER OBIORA Online Editor at InvestAdvocate, Adebola Akindele, Group Managing Director (GMD) Courteville Business Solutions Plc, listed on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) in London United Kingdom (UK) talks on “ Egole” a Cyber Space Shopping site and one stop business community via the internet: Excerpts:

On “Egole” and benefit to people in Diaspora

Egole is a Nigerian word in local dialect for “What is the Price”, what Courteville has done is to establish an online shopping Mall for businesses and Consumers to interact; without necessarily needing a Physical Structure to be able to do their businesses; what can satisfy their daily requirement of buying and selling.

It is not restricted to just Nigeria, even though we have just started in Nigeria, and it is catching up at a fast pace. Currently, it is the most robust Online Shopping Platform in Nigeria and West Africa at this time. What we have come to do at African and Caribbean Business Expo (ACCBE) essentially is to try and project this to the people in Diaspora.

There are lots of Nigerians and West Africans who are here and on the average; there is a need for them to transfer or to make transfers back and forth. Egole has been designed to do so many things as regards people’s shopping. Buying Monthly provision, seasonal stock and so on. This can be done without necessarily transferring cash or sending cash physically across borders. People in London will be able to buy any product online, pay for same product Online and have them delivered to their destination in Nigeria.

Again, we are the Co-sponsors of the Africa Fashion Week London (AFWL); that was concluded on Saturday and there has been a lot of inquires from Marketers and Sellers of various products; who participated at the AFWL about how they could come online and shop.

Interestingly, people from places like Zambia, Zimbabwe and Uganda actually requested to know how they could come on Board. This is a better system of carrying out commerce and that is what Egole is all about.

How much did Courteville invest in the Egole?

First and foremost, what we have done is to say that the ACCBE experience should give us the leverage that would probably allow us to move our business faster into countries outside Nigeria and Sierra-Leone; where we currently operate; but between Africa and the Caribbean in the first instance. We have targeted a very significant percentage of our Turnover as the marketing expense for this and that is part of what we have done. I don’t want to quote exact figures; but I can tell you it’s in Millions of US Dollars.

What’s the Customer Base of Egole in Nigeria?

Interestingly we just launched Egole at the beginning of July and activities had started prior to that time, but as at the end of July we had over 100 Merchants on board and over 25,000 products and this is growing; because as enough awareness is being created, we have more people coming. They are actually more people joining and are ready to pay. These are Merchants, a lot people are now doing most of their commercial activities online from Egole.

For example at home, my family and a number of families around us, I know shop on Egole; all products like top up card, online purchases of Computer and technology equipments and other goods are on Egole. Everybody is glad that this is here, logistics are cheap on Egole in terms of how to deliver, where and how fast; maximum in 48 hours, for the Client to receive whatever was purchased; once it’s during the working hours of the shopping time.

Any challenge on Egole?

The major challenge is essentially the fact that we still have to operate based on Merchants who will not necessarily stock majority of the items that people would want to buy. For example, if you want to buy items, and you need to buy from up to three or four Merchants at once, this creates problem for logistics; not necessarily in picking and delivering; but in terms of how shipping costs are addressed. However, Courteville is looking at this seriously and we are coming up with a solution very quickly. First and foremost, what we have done is to immediately increase the size of the Courier Companies that are involved. It will interest you to know that a universal Company FedEx is on board. That means we can reach anywhere in the world whenever we want to do so. This has reduced the cost of delivery; it’s the cheapest of such anywhere in West Africa at this time, we will get to that point where in a one stop shop, a customer can get all the goods needed; because we are working with a potential investor. There will be a situation whereby we will have everything in one warehouse; thereby reducing the cost of logistics, this will happen in the nearest future.

Beyond this, awareness creation and for people to believe in what we are doing was very important during the test run of Egole, people had learnt over the years not to entirely trust what could be done in this way; however, it’s a new experience for a lot of people to get it securely delivered without anybody cheating them out of their money. This we are facing and we have been doing a lot of Public Relations and marketing effort to create awareness in this area.

How much are you expecting to get from Egole within its first year of operation?

In the first year, we will hope to achieve up to 10 percent in terms of Courteville’s revenue projection for 2012, that’s what we hope to achieve. We started midway into the year, we started in July as I earlier affirmed and we would go out to achieve this; because we are going to put in a lot of resources to achieve this by creating awareness of what the facilities and opportunities are on the Egole platform.

On competition

Competition is good and as you have stated, there have been attempts by several companies to do this before now; but we did not just launch Egole in July of 2012, we have spent some years working on it, it has taken us since year 2008 and this is the fourth year of our effort in trying to establish a very strong base, we had the time and resources to execute this.

Again, we had the expertise, background and antecedent to be able to achieve this level of success. Everything that we have tried putting out in the Market has been successful to a certain extent and we pray to God that this will also succeed.

There are a number of other small efforts both in Nigeria and outside Nigeria; but like I earlier said, in everything we do, Egole will be the foremost business solutions Company in Nigeria and the world.

Future outlook for Egole

Egole is our key efforts at making sure that we diversify our business base; from Government related activities and we hope that within five years, Egole will be in the forefront of being an entirely private sector established and driven business on the Courteville platform. We expect that in five years, we should be doing up to 50% or more of what Courteville will achieve in terms of revenue.

Our success will speak for Egole, our antecedent and the believe that people have in Courteville, in our structure, integrity and ability to deliver on everything that we have always promised to do, we will sell Egole; but more importantly, we always will continue to put a lot of effort into marketing and work with the people who would project the successes of the Egole.

How would the anticipated successes of Egole benefit shareholders of Courteville?

It’s straight forward, when there is no business; there is no revenue, if you are careful that translates to profit, if there is no profit, there is nothing for shareholders to benefit; as we have stated, in five years, if we are able to achieve our target, it could translate to improved dividend payout to shareholders of the Company.

End