Nigerian e-commerce startup Gloo.ng is set to open its first Gloo Fresh physical store, and will scale the service to other locations over the next two years as it pursues further growth.
Gloo.ng started life in 2012 as BuyCommonThings.com, but rebranded the next year, and specialises in delivering affordable supermarket goods to the doorsteps of clients on a same-day basis.
In a bid to continue its impressive growth, Gloo.ng’s first physical Gloo Fresh outlet will open soon, with chief executive officer (CEO) Olumide Olusanya saying it would scale to 23 locations over the next two years.
Gloo Fresh stores will stock fresh products and the most commonly shopped pantry goods in the vicinity of the respective locations. Olusanya told Disrupt Africa they will serve as an additional opportunity for Gloo.ng to create brand awareness, and will also serve as onboarding ramps for the full online service.
He said it did not signal a change in direction for the startup, but was rather part of its core approach to growth in that it wants an increased share of users’ average monthly housekeeping allowances (AMHA).
“We have generally built up and enhanced the product and service offering since founding to capture a greater portion of this AMHA spend to Gloo. We believe we have now gotten to the point where we feel this is a product customers love,” Olusanya said.
“We believe we have passed the midpoint of AMHA for the typical middle class family, considering what we estimate that to be for a typical Lagos middle class family.”
The Gloo Fresh stores, then, symbolise a new thrust from the startup for scale-level growth by ramping up the speed at which it adds homemaker target customers to the Gloo.ng service.
“It is a very sticky service. Hence, we have spent zero on customer acquisition these past two years,” Olusanya said.
“So whereas our growth so far has largely been driven by “capturing more value from existing target customers” by improving the service offering over the couple of years to achieve PMF, we now want to drive our future growth by “capturing more numbers of potential target customers.” We believe GlooFresh gives us the best opportunity to achieve that in a cost-effective means, asides other benefits and opportunities it presents to continue increasing AMHA captured.”
