For a long time, the process of buying and selling typically involved customers visiting businesses in person to make purchases. These businesses kept all of their stocks and orders recorded in books. Inventory management systems were big investments and reserved for large companies, while small businesses were left out. But the advent of the internet has changed how businesses manage customer orders.
In 2019, over 70% of internet access in Nigeria were recorded on mobile devices, whereas this share was even higher when it came to online marketplace visits.
With new technologies like Bumpa, small businesses can now afford better inventory management systems and also utilize the same top solutions used by bigger businesses directly on their smartphones. When done effectively, businesses reduce the costs of carrying excess inventory while maximizing sales.
Bumpa is an inventory management and mobile store builder and offers an easier way for businesses to keep track of their inventory. The platform allows businesses to manage multi-channel orders. For example, small businesses that have both physical stores and online stores can monitor and track sales made in both places easily.
In an Interview with Nairametrics, Kelvin Umechukwu, CEO of Bumpa explained what Bumpa does and why business owners should bring their business online and also use inventory management
“So, what Bumpa does is provide small businesses with a website to make their customers order from their businesses a lot better, inventory management system, sales management system and even CRM directly on their smartphones. “Imagine being able to create your own website and manage it entirely on your phone, being able to record orders, your customers and track what they do, who you’ve delivered to all those things. it’s like a one stop retail solution for businesses,” Umechukwu said.
In the past, businesses that wanted an online sales presence had to hire in-house web designers and developers to build websites for them. As technology evolved, this is no longer required. High-quality, user-friendly e-commerce solutions are readily available on the market.
Kelvin explained that Bumpa started as a side project in 2018 before going full time in May this year. He said, “Myself and my co-founder Adetunji Opayele were both working at HostCabal, where we provided hosting services for developers, people that wanted to build websites, they could host their services and websites. We discovered that people, business owners started requesting that we build their websites for them. We built the entire system for them that was totally web-based. I think the first challenge we encountered was that we expected people that wanted to use a service to have a computer.”
“Right now, you don’t even need a computer, you can do everything on your mobile phone. For retailers, the website just served as an alternate channel to make sales and they still had to use their books to record sales. That’s where we visibly saw the need for us to build out an end-to-end solution for small businesses that can cater for, their online engagements as well as what’s happening offline. We called it Sales Cabal then before recently changing to Bumpa.”
In terms of growth, Kelvin mentioned that they have over 6000 businesses and 4000 of those came in the past three months.
”We also collect payments so when customers receive money, they get a notification on their app that payment has been made by a customer,” he said.
So far, Bumpa merchants have listed more than 30,000 products and completed over $500,000 in recorded transactions.
How Bumpa makes money
Umechukwu added that the base services on Bumpa are free but customers can pay for extra features and they also have premium plans. Premium users can customize their domain name, get more in-depth insights on how their business is doing and how customers interact with them.
“We charge between $5 – $10 monthly subscription for the premium services. Then we also make money via online transaction charges,” he said.
After closing a $200,000 pre-seed round, Bumpa is looking to empower more small business owners with the tools to grow their businesses. Within the next year, the startup wants to reach 200,000 merchants.
