Amazon announced it will launch an e-commerce business in South Africa next year 2024. This comes after weeks and months of speculation, finally the tech giant is coming to Mzansi, hopefully TakeAlot and other retail platforms are not worried about the move.
The company wasted no time, already asking independent retail merchants to start registering on their platform sell.amazon.com/south-africa starting from 17 October. For the tech giant coming to South Africa it’s a big win for small and medium-sized businesses to start trading and making money.
“We look forward to launching Amazon.co.za in South Africa, providing local sellers, brand owners, and entrepreneurs – small and large – the opportunity to grow their business with Amazon and deliver great value and a convenient shopping experience for customers across South Africa,” said Robert Koen, general manager of the Sub-Saharan Africa region for Amazon.
“The launch of Amazon.co.za in 2024 will provide independent sellers throughout the country an opportunity to rapidly launch, grow, and scale their businesses while leveraging the innovative capabilities provided by Amazon,” it said.
Paul Theron, MD of Vestact Asset Management speaking to Talk Radio 702’s Bruce Whitfield had this to say about Amazon coming to South Africa: “It’s going to be heavy sledding for them because there are lots of good logistics players in this country, lots of competitors… Takealot’s not going to take it lying down etcetera, etcetera.”
“Personally, I buy quite a lot of household goods, hardware, electronics and bits and pieces on Takealot – so I suspect that could be a good niche for Amazon which has got lots of global specials they can bring to bear.”
“I think Amazon globally is quite an interesting investment opportunity at $132 a share, because they’ve got a lot of upside in their US business I think, and then there’s the web hosting business… Another thing Amazon makes a lot of money from is advertising, where third party sellers pay in order to have their stuff brought to shoppers’ attention over others,” said Theron.
Should TakeaLot be worried?
