Six months after its first commercial sale, e-commerce and event ticketing platform NETSHOP says it earned N3 million ($6,000) in revenue, sold over 350 items, reached about a million people and listed over 20 products on its website.
At a time when media companies are being forced to rethink their business models, NETSHOP is one of the products being pushed by NET News, the Nigerian media organization behind thenet.ng, newsroom.ng, star.ng and orin.ng. NET is one of the few media companies placing a foot in e-commerce, testing the waters and hoping to develop new business areas to ensure survival at a time when advertising revenues continue to dwindle as seen in Google’s recent decision to pull 1.7 billion ads off its network.
NETSHOP was announced by the company’s founder, Ayeni Adekunle in April 2016, during the annual #NECLive. The platform is designed to be a shop for everything entertainment – from events tickets, to books and merchandise.
‘We’re creating opportunities for those who love entertainment to be able to conveniently access the products they want; be it tickets to events, merchandise, books, and everything else’, he said.
A survey of Nigerian celebrities in 2015 showed that 75% of them have prototypes and models for consumer products – T-shirts, perfumes, mugs, hats, etc., but most failed to roll out due to sales and distribution challenges. The few who did launch have had to battle the chaos in the open market space.
‘We wanted to place entertainment products right where there’s demand for them – on entertainment platforms where their consumers come to regularly. Thenetng has over 20 million users across our different platforms, so we thought there’s no better place to discuss, say, a new 2face Idibia perfume line, a Mercy Johnson hair product, a Wizkid concert, or a Julius Agwu book.
Usually, most event planners complain of poor corporate sponsorship with many artistes unable to go on tours or host their own shows, while those who do are unable to sell to their real fans until event day. Events in Lagos, Abuja and Port Harcourt are dominated by “VVIP” tables mostly sold to corporates and money-bags. In 2016, that trend changed a bit, with the coming of platforms like NETSHOP. From awards shows to music concerts, over 45% of attendees bought their tickets online, with most of the NETSHOP events being sold out weeks before D-Day.
As the trend continues, it is evident that growth opportunities still abound in Nigeria’s e-commerce sector for content publishers, particularly platforms that understand Nigerian entertainment consumers, and that have direct access to both fans and stars like NET does.