Covid propels F-commerce sales by women entrepreneurs
Female entrepreneurs who conduct their business through Facebook or F-commerce are receiving a record number of orders amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic as people continue to shop from home in fear of infection.
Since early April, when the infection rate suddenly started to climb rapidly, thousands of orders poured in for lifestyle products while the Eid-ul-Fitr shopping season also bumped up sales. This instantly turned the platform into a digital purchase juggernaut.
With a follower base ranging from 10,000 to over a million people, these entrepreneurs simply have to post a picture of their item or showcase it on Facebook live to draw their attention.
As a result, they typically receive anywhere from 50 to more than 1,000 orders daily.
HUR nusrat, an F-commerce page with nearly a million followers, saw its sales double during Ramadan compared to pre-pandemic levels.
"Our employees had to work round-the-clock to deliver the huge number of orders during the second wave that coincided with the peak sales season," said Nusrat Akhter Lopa, who owns the page.
Lopa, who started selling products through Facebook back in 2015 with a starting capital of Tk 1,200, sold several thousand lifestyle products during the last Eid season.
Layla Sarmeen of Safriana's Touch, an F-commerce platform that sells women's clothes, said she never thought that she would get such a tremendous response amid the current crisis.
"But as soon as I posted a picture of my locally sourced products, all of them were booked," she added.
Ever since the second wave began, Safriana's Touch has sold products worth around Tk 4 lakh.
During Ramadan, the company registered sales of about Tk 3 lakh while it was only Tk 50,000 for the same period in the pre-pandemic era.
"The tendency to buy products online increased during the pandemic and the second wave gave it another push," Sarmeen said.
Tania Sultana of Biraz Bou, a F-commerce platform based in Mymensingh, said she sold saris and three pieces worth Tk 7.5 lakh amid the second wave.
The Eid sales season and nationwide lockdown began almost simultaneously and that pushed many people to go for online shopping.
The government imposed a nationwide lockdown and other strict measures on public movement on April 14 in a bid to curb the surge in coronavirus infections.
"We are still receiving many orders even after Eid," she added.
Sultana went on to thank the Women and e-Commerce Forum (WE), a Facebook group with 1.2 million members where women with different skills can promote their products or services.
According to her, she and some other women in the region sold over Tk 52 lakh worth lifestyle products with the help of WE since the beginning of the second wave.
With the lessons learnt from last year's Eid, women entrepreneurs were better prepared this year as they sourced products beforehand, enhanced their marketing and worked on smoothing the delivery service, said Nasima Akter Nisha, president of WE.
"So, sales during the second wave and Ramadan were great," she added.
Nisha said F-commerce created a scope to empower women, many of whom are coming forward to showcase their skills and talent.
F-commerce has been thriving over the last few years in Bangladesh thanks to the huge size of the Facebook audience, which, according to data firm Statista, has now reached 41 million. This places Bangladesh among the top 10 highest Facebook-using nations.
With the option to boost sales by paying Facebook, which automates the paid users' ads to show products that are tailored to each person's interests, many youths, especially women entrepreneurs, started selling goods or services on the world's largest social media platform.
Thousands of women from across the country now sell a range of products through Facebook, particularly handmade traditional clothing items and homemade foods.
During last year's Eid season, when there was a strict lockdown in place, most F-commerce entrepreneurs were unprepared and scrambled to deliver a deluge of orders.
According to logistics aggregators and industry insiders, during Ramadan this year, around 1,000 female F-commerce entrepreneurs delivered an estimated 35,000 clothing items per day up till Eid day.
Rahath Ahmed, co-founder and chief marketing officer of Paperfly, which makes doorstep deliveries for its online merchants, said they have been making a huge number of deliveries of F-commerce platforms run by women.
F-commerce entrepreneurs now understand that they have to provide the customers with good quality products to succeed in the long run.
"As the quality increases, female clients flock to their platforms and products are being sold out very fast," he added.
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