Egypt's growing rate of Internet users has encouraged many people to start their own businesses. Sarah Eissa listens to their experiences E-business is booming in Egypt and the Arab world. With over 18 million Internet users in Egypt alone, numerous websites have been opening to online trade, with Souq.com, CashU and others, including Facebook and other social networking sites, becoming pioneers in this growing field. Rita Koshakji, 28, an administrative assistant in a petroleum company, decided to take the plunge into a second career and start an Internet business, launching a Facebook make-up site that now has 900 members. Koshakji started her business in February 2009 and moved to Facebook in September, and it took her only two months to become known on the site. "At first, I depended on face-to-face communication and word of mouth, as this tends to build on relations of trust. However, I needed to grow more quickly, and so I started the Facebook group," she comments. When someone joins the group, his or her friends find out about it through the site's news feed feature. "People tend to click on the new group out of curiosity, and if they like it they join it as well," Koshakji says. Her customer base doubled after she had created the group, she adds. "Everyone told me to create the group, but at first I wasn't convinced. I thought I could depend on magazine advertising, but this is expensive and it's not guaranteed that people will see magazine ads. Facebook, on the other hand, is free and is part of people's lives. Some people are even logged on to Facebook all the time by mobile phone and look at it while they are at work." "Everybody uses Facebook, even the over 50s and those who do not work," Koshakji adds. Another Internet entrepreneur is May Ateya, 28, a training developer at a mobile phone operator who started a second business on Facebook. Ateya started her own handmade silver accessories business on the site, and her group now has 450 members. Her first orders started to come in some two months after setting up the site, Ateya starting by selling her products on the Internet alone and then branching out by selling products on company open days and among friends and colleagues. "These methods complement one another," she says. "The Internet is a great way to display your work and get people's feedback." Because the Facebook group was the first place that she had presented her work, Ateya was afraid that people might not like the designs or join the group. In her view, the pros of e- commerce are that products are accessible 24 hours a day seven days a week and they can reach a potentially very large customer base, both domestic and international, with nearly no start-up costs. "However, there is a danger that products can be imitated by other manufacturers if they are put on the web, and customers might be hesitant about making on-line purchases, sometimes preferring to see the products they are buying first," she comments. Ateya adds that despite the rapid growth in Internet users over the past few years, e-commerce still faces problems of trust between buyers and sellers. "In our culture, people are still not used to Internet shopping, particularly since we remain a cash-based society with limited use of credit cards. People also tend to mistrust Internet security measures, and they often prefer to see products before taking the decision to buy them. These problems can all be overcome in face-to-face selling." Her customers pay for the products they buy on delivery, so there is little risk when placing orders. "Word of mouth has a great influence in creating confidence, which develops further after a first purchase," she says. One of the main problems Ateya faces is finding a balance between her e-business and her regular job. Though family and friends support her, the project is still very much a one-woman show, she says, with Ateya being in charge of everything, from buying materials to delivering the final product to customers. Imitation is not an important issue to Ateya, even though she admits this can be an issue in Internet commerce. "We live in an open market, and as far as handmade products are concerned you can't stop people imitating your work. Instead, you need to adapt quickly to market dynamics and be creative," she says. Salma Mashhour, 28, a home cake decorator and designer, started her business in 2007. After just one month, she decided to move the business to Facebook, promoting her work on her group, which now has 8,000 members. "At first, I didn't have many members, but in 2009 I started cake decoration and designing and from that point onwards I was blessed with many more orders and members," Mashhour says. Before moving the business onto the Internet, Mashhour feared the kind of clients she might have to deal with. "You can filter the type of clients you want to deal with when you are working on the Internet. Also people imitating your ideas, or even stealing your products, are common on the Internet, but these were chances I had to take," she says. To a certain extent, Mashhour's fears were justified, since some of her pictures and ideas were lifted by others. In one incident, she discovered that a competitor was promoting her work under another person's name. "I sent a complaint to the managers of the site, but they did not act to close it, so I had to accept that this was something I could not control," Mashhour says. "Sometimes people order things, but then do not collect them, and this can also be a problem with e-commerce," she adds. As a result, Mashhour now asks for a 50 per cent deposit on orders and confirmation that the rest of the money will be paid on delivery. "People pay the deposit to me personally, and as a result they feel confident that they will indeed receive their orders to the proper quality," Mashhour comments. Though such issues remain concerns, Mashhour adds that there are also many advantages of e-commerce. "You can control when to deal with certain people, for example," she says. "The Internet represents a new market and a new opportunity, and everyone is buying online now since they find it easier to do so from home." "More and more people are using the Internet as a new shopping gateway, even if some still have fears about buying over the web. I myself perfectly understand such feelings, as unfortunately some online traders are not as professional as they should be. You can buy something after seeing the picture, and then get something that is not what you saw," she says. According to Sherif Nassar, managing director of Nefsak.com, a website that has been operating for almost two years, e-commerce today is experiencing impressive development even though some people still resist it as it is a new and to a certain extent still unknown way of doing things in Egypt. However, Nassar says the number of people visiting his site, and the number of those actually buying goods as a result, has increased a lot, meaning that "now that people have started to get used to online shopping, they have found that it can mean added value." Shopping in Cairo, Nassar adds, can be a challenge, and this gives e-commerce a great advantage. "Distribution is underdeveloped, and if you decide to buy a pen, for example, you may still have to go to three or four shops before you find one you like. What with the traffic situation, the stress, and the time pressures, it can be quite a challenge to shop in Cairo," and this is where e-commerce has a great advantage over physical shopping. It is much easier to enter an electronic site where you can see a range of products, and then make a choice between them, later receiving the products at home. In Nassar's view, three factors are important in any successful online business. It is important for customers to have confidence in the place they buy from, and this only comes with time as people get more used to buying through the Internet. A second factor is the importance of good customer service and in honouring undertakings made to customers. A third factor is that customers must have a suitable way of paying. "The market penetration of credit cards in Egypt is still weak, though it is developing," Nassar says. "For this reason, we make cash on delivery an option for customers instead," their paying for the products they order when they receive them. In order to ensure that online transactions are secure, Nefsak.com has an agreement with the Arab-African International Bank, such that when customers click the submit button to pay for their order they are directed to the bank's website where they type in their credit card data. Once the payment has been accepted by the bank, an acceptance message is sent. "The security level on the site is the security level of the bank. We don't see credit card data, and the bank just sends me its acceptance of the order and the amount," Nassar says. However, Nassar feels that there are improvements that could be made to the regulatory environment in order to encourage e- commerce. At the moment there is no proper regulation, and as a result there are sites that sell products without providing proper documentation, or even sell used, copied, smuggled or illegal items. "If there was better regulation, customers would trust e- commerce more, and the government would get the tax revenues it needs," Nassar adds. Despite such difficulties, he is optimistic about the future of e- commerce in Egypt. "E-commerce is everywhere today. We are late, that's all. E-commerce should have taken off years ago, especially since the government has said that it supports this new field," Nassar says.
