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TCS | Andy Higgins on the outlook for online shopping in South Africa

Andy Higgins, founder of e-commerce solutions company Bob Group, knows more about e-commerce in South Africa than most people. Higgins founded Bidorbuy (now Bob Shop) at the height of the dot-com boom in the late 1990s, and over the past 25 years has actively participated in the industry as it has mushroomed from those nascent beginnings. In this episode of the TechCentral Show (TCS), Higgins has a look back at the growth of the industry, and what’s likely to propel its future expansion. In the show, Higgins unpacks: • How Bob Group has done since it was created nearly two years ago through the merger of Bidorbuy and uAfrica, and what the future holds for the business; • What is driving the rapid growth in South Africa’s e-commerce industry – did Covid lockdowns give it the spark for its current rapid expansion, or is there more at play?; • The rise of on-demand deliveries in South Africa and what it means for online retailers; • The rise of Chinese competitors – how much of a threat are Shein and Temu really, and is the South African Revenue Service right to crack down?; • The Competition Commission’s intervention in the market and whether it is warranted; • Whether Amazon’s South African launch was a flop; and • What trends to look out for as the market develops further in the coming years. Don’t miss a fascinating discussion!

Duration:: 35m
Broadcast on:: 16 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: aac

I'm Duncan McLeod and this is the Tech Central Show. TCS is brought to you by MTN Business, and you can visit them at mtnbusiness.co.ca and we thank them very much for partnering for the show and bringing you these great interviews. Just a reminder that you can subscribe to TCS on YouTube at youtube.com/techcentral or simply search "techcentral" one word in your favourite podcasting app and you will find all of our shows. Now in the studio today is none other than Andy Higgins, the founder of the auction website Biddleby and the man behind what Biddleby has morphed into today and that's Bob Group. Andy, it's really good to see you. It's been a while. How are you doing? Well, good. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Fantastic. It's been two years ago now and that was regarding the launch of Bob Group, which was in amalgamation of Biddleby and a business called UAfrica. I think you said at the time that the plan was to create an all-in-one marketplace that helps sellers sell goods and services online and handles delivery and inventory management and all the rest of it. How's it gone? How's Bob Group doing? What have you changed since we lost work? Yeah, I think the plan has pretty much stayed the same. It's going well. There's a lot going on in the industry, of course, which makes things very interesting every day. We still got our five services, the one being the marketplace, formerly Biddleby, which is Bob Shop. That's grown over the last year, about about 20%. But it's also facing lots of challenges and lots of disruptions within the market, so it's been very interesting. And one of our newer services, which has taken us longer than we would have liked to get going, mostly because of all the compliance and regulation involved in that's around payments. So that's our Bob Pay service, but I'm super excited about that because I think the market person I believe is ripe for disruption. And we hope to be a player part, be one of the disruptors. And then we've got one of our more mature, which is a business, which is the old UAfrica and that's Bob Goa Courier aggregator, and that's growing about 30% year-on-year at the moment. And another very exciting newer service, in fact, I think I would have mentioned it this last time. That's our smart locker service called Bob Box. And we think that, especially in the South African markets, there's a lot of opportunity there, in particular servicing the under-service e-commerce market in South Africa. And then our fifth service is going along strongly as well, and that's our software as a service solution for courier companies called SHIPLogic, which is growing nicely as well. So, yeah, there's a company in South America called Mercado Libre, a listed company. And I think they valued at something like $80 billion or something crazy. We've looked at their success, and to a large degree, we try to sort of replicate where we can what their success that they've had in South America here, because we think there's a lot of parallels. I was just reading about that company the other day, they're based in Uruguay, aren't they? Yes, I think legally based in Uruguay, that obviously the bigger market's been Brazil and Argentina and that was in Mexico and a few other South African countries, Latin America. So, Bob Pay, tell me a bit more about Bob Pay. So, Bob Pay, so, of course, I have my roots and payments from my involvement in Payfast from when I was involved with starting that with Jonathan Smith in 2007, but exited that business in 2019, so it's been five years, so... You've done your gardening leave. Yes, I feel that way. For me, probably one of the most exciting aspects is the introduction of Pay Shop, and I think we can leverage that to make a difference. Again, looking at South America, it seems to come up quite a bit now in Brazil, in particular, they have a very similar service called PIX, which now has, in just a matter of a few years, has overtaken by a number of transactions overtaken card. Credit and debit cards combined in Brazil now PIX processes more transactions than card combined in total. So, it can change very quickly. I think in South Africa, we've got a few challenges there to overcome as well, and for once it's not, in my view, at least from my perspective where I'm sitting, it's not government. I think the Reserve Bank and Bank serve, in particular, they've been very proactive from my perspective in trying to get this out, and the bigger obstacles have become more from the private sector from the banks themselves who are pushing back a bit, I think, trying to protect some of their legacy income, which I think we're very quick to criticize government often as in the private sector, but I think in this case, it seems like it's the banks that are being more of a holding it back. That's interesting. Do you think the banks are wrong to impose fees on Pay Shop transactions? Look, I think they can impose fees, a reasonable fee, and for me, I think it's wrong personally to impose it on the consumer. I think in our world, in the e-commerce world, it's accepted that the merchant can pay a fee for transaction, and I think that's fine. In this case, I think it should be in relation to their costs, which we know with Pay Shop, the cost base is much, much lower. Yeah, so I think it should be for to really get the adoption it deserves, it should be free for a consumer. Okay. Interesting. We've seen companies like Meta with WhatsApp launching instant payment services in instant messaging apps, like WhatsApp in Brazil, India, and I think some other markets is potentially as well now. Are you seeing that as an opportunity in South Africa, do WhatsApp or instant messaging-based payment solutions? Absolutely. I think in more general, for e-commerce, people are already using it. It's just a bit clunky, right? And I think once those services become available, it just becomes streamlined and it will just grow even faster. I think we underestimate actually how much e-commerce actually takes place informally through social media, social commerce, sometimes it's referred to. Okay. So when can we look out for Bob Pay, when do you think it's going to be ready? Well, we've already launched it. It's available at the moment, but it's Pay Shop hasn't gone live yet. We hope to go live with, we actually hope to be certainly one of the first to go live. It's not the first if we can get there. It's certainly not a technical limitation at the moment. Is there a bit of a race going on? I assume there is. I'm not really aware. I assume some of the other payment gateways must be implementing it as well. But we're ready to go. We're just waiting for approval from our partner bank. And then we're ready to start testing it. But that is sort of phase one. It's what they call pay by proxy. So it's still not going to be the best user experience. And we expect by October this year for additional functionality to be in place called request to pay. And that will be a much better user experience. And that will also allow currently where the banks charge, which is most of the banks charge the consumer fee, they'll still be that fee now, which makes it less attractive than using other payment methods like card. Right. But when we get request to pay, that will be reversible to the merchant. And I think it's going to be make much more sense then from an e-commerce perspective. Yes. But we want to get going as soon as we can. Okay. Interesting. What else is coming from Bob Group in the next little while? Well, that exciting project for me, it's all the new shiny stuff, right? But it's our smart locker system, which we've done a lot of research around it. We even hired some expensive consultants to advise us. And their advice was strongly not to build our own locker solution. Because there's many solutions available that you can purchase, not in South Africa, but around the world. And being the technology focused company we are and a bunch of geeks, we couldn't resist. And we've ended up embarking on a process of the last almost two years now of building our own solution, designing the hardware, the firmware, all of that locally and having the actual physical lock is manufactured locally as well through a partner. And that's allowed us to do it based on the information we have at about 20% of the cost of what it would have cost us to import a solution. And of course, it gives us much more control over it. So we've also made it South African proof, we think, we've tried. It's not relying on external power supply, it runs off a battery. We using a very cool internet of things protocol for the communication called MBR IT. We partnered with Vodacom and that. And it's a new technology that allows you low power, low bandwidth, but allows us to be sort of real time online, being able to update, to communicate with our lockers out in the world. From a tech point of view, it's been a very fun and interesting, but also challenging product. We used to building software as a company. This is the first hardware project we've taken on, which obviously tends to have longer iteration cycles and other challenges that you just don't think of. And then when you need to update something, it tends to take longer. So we're very excited about the lockers. In some countries in Europe, obviously they're different markets and population make up and all of that is different in how people live, how dense housing is and that sort of thing makes a difference. But in a country like Poland, something like 80% of e-commerce deliveries are made to lockers. Wow, 80%. Yeah. Yeah. So there is obviously an educational thing there as well. Where's the opportunity? Is it in townships? Is it in shopping centers? Where are you going to deploy these things? So the answer is all over, but I'm particularly excited about the opportunities also in the more like in like townships and places like that. We've still got a long way to go. We've got 70 locations at the moment, only in harting, Cape Town. Identified for rollout or... No, really? Active flight. Yes. Okay. You guys don't miss around? No, no. And we're hoping to update. Are we setting quite ambitious tasks? I don't know if our target for next year is to reach a thousand locations by the end of next year. Wow. We can do it because we'll ask our solution now is at least stable, we believe. And we can roll out, you know, having the local manufacturing. We can roll out quite quickly the lead times for us are quite low now. So yes, I think it's petrol station, four courts, it's shopping malls. We have one in the residential state where I live and that's working well. Business parks. That's lockers. We should also mention we also do counters. So that's more a solution like a taxi or a pargo. We are very much focused on the lockers, but we think they should work hand in hand with counters as well. In Europe, they refer to that as pudo pickup drop of points, which is also very popular. There's most countries now have thousands of points nationwide. So we think it's also the cost of deliveries in particular into townships. There's surcharges that get typically charged by careers. And so I personally believe that's when we're going to get the real breakthrough in e-commerce in this country, is when we can make e-commerce accessible to the entire population. And then it makes sense also for rural areas, right? For you know, if you live out on a farm or somewhere, generally you would or have someone who's going into town once a week or whatever the case is, and you can go and pick up your parcel then. And I think it's going to help to drive e-commerce arts in the more out-of-lying areas as well. That's not easy. Is there good money in rolling out lockers? No, it's not. It's like margin business. That's a good question you ask. We do look at those numbers every day and we ask ourselves, "Wow, are we doing this sometimes?" Because financially it is very challenging to get right. So it's really a numbers game. And it's all about consolidation as well. And so we also launching an app before the end of this year, it'll be a consumer app, a bar box consumer app. And so you'll be able to book your shipment on the app. Anyone shipping anything from, or as long as it fits in the locker, from A to B. And so I think to some extent you could argue the demise of the, unfortunately, the demise of the South African Postal Service in this country, we actually have an opportunity there more than other countries because there is a need for even outside of e-commerce for people to ship things and at cost effectively. And so in order for this model to work financially, we believe we have to go quite broad. But what we also, our model is not, it's what we would call career agnostic model. So we're not becoming a career company ourselves. We want to build this network of lockers and we want to open it up and because we believe we're good at the tech, we think we're well positioned to do that. We want to open it up to many different careers who can use it because we think it doesn't make sense, for example, for 10 different career companies to have their own locker outside a residential estate, for example. So we want to be sort of provide that infrastructure, that network and then enable any other career who wants to tap into that to be able to use it. And that's also how we hope to get to the scale we need to make it work financially. Do you think there's any role for the post office in e-commerce in South Africa or was that that ship sailed? No, definitely. I mean, my dream personally actually would be to do a public-private partnership with the post office. And I was encouraged seeing, you know, with the changes happening in the communication ministry. I think they've even indicated that that's the direction they would favor going. So if anyone, if you have context with the new Minister of Communication, I'm here. I think we have the best solution, how we can actually work together with the post office to provide an excellent solution, not only for e-commerce, but for postal services across the country. Yeah, okay. Love to do that. Interesting. Interesting. Salim Alats, if you're watching the show, give me a call. This is the man you want to speak to. Let's switch gears a little now, Andy. Let's talk about the e-commerce market in South Africa more broadly because I think since the last time we spoke, a lot has happened. It was already shifting in that direction. I think when we spoke in September of '22, we were two years into the COVID pandemic, which obviously had a big impact on the market as well. And I think drove a lot of people to think about shopping online for the first time. And I think a lot of those customers probably stuck around post-COVID. Is that the experience you had as well that a lot of people perhaps dabbled in e-commerce for the first time, said, "Hey, this actually works quite well, I'm going to continue doing it." Look, I think if you look certainly at our stats, we got that spike during COVID. And shortly after COVID as well. But it has more, from what I can see, normalized more reverted to its original growth, at least looking back. What happens looking forward is another thing. So you had this spike and then it sort of normalized to the people I think sort of did resort back to the old ways somewhat, from what we can see. Okay, but there definitely has been a solid growth in the last few years. And in fact, I was just looking at some recent research from World Wide Works, Arthur Goldstock's research firm, the show that e-commerce is growing and has reached 6% or reached 6% of retail sales in South Africa in 2023. And Arthur said that figure is expected to breach the 10% mark sometime in 2025. What's driving this growth, do you think? What are the underpinning factors that are propelling people to shop online and going into a retail store? Look, I think it's, I don't know for sure, but I imagine it's a few factors. One of them is that South Africa has just been so far behind the other countries, right? If you look even at the other emerging markets, they all work really well above 10%. So I think there's a certain degree of catch-up and COVID did help accelerate that. So, there's that, I think the competition has definitely helped in particular the Chinese players. I think it's helped accelerate that. And so people have become more comfortable with putting their credit card in online and shopping online. Yes. And I actually think even the likes of Checker6060 on demand delivery, I think people have experienced that and that I think has had some spillover effect into broader e-commerce as well. So my guess is it's mostly catch-up though and people are finally realizing the benefits of shopping online. Yeah. Yeah. You mentioned Checker6060, obviously a huge success and many companies try to emulate what they've done in that space. How important is on-demand delivery in the e-commerce context in South Africa? Do you see this becoming the primary way that people shop online? I need a new microwave, I want it in the next hour. I think for mainstream items, that's true, but I mean for me where e-commerce really comes into its own is with the long tail, right? So it's the choice. People shop online for research shows for primarily three reasons. One is price, second is choice of a variety and third is convenience. So on-demand, I think it's the convenience and I think that will drive it and continue to drive it. But I mean if you're looking for something that's not that common, it's not a commodity or mainstream item that, trying to say it may be available in the country but at a location where it can be delivered to you within one hour or whatever the case may be. So I think it's multifaceted from that point of view and I think they're both feed off each other and feel the growth and both will be important. Okay, okay. Now you mentioned the Chinese vendors, they're not only impacting our market but in America, Western Europe, lots of concern, particularly about shine or shame, I'm never sure quite sure how to pronounce it. Sheen and Temu. And we've seen objections in the South African market from the likes of TFG take a lot which of course are in Superbless and other companies being very critical of the way these companies are allegedly exploiting loopholes in the local South African tax codes. Do the critics have a point? I totally, I think so. I mean those rules that they are exploiting you could argue are from pre- sort of internet days even. Okay. I don't think they're just divinimous regulations or codes which just explain it to me. It's based on a minimum, so I think it was based on reduced admin, right? So if an individual or small company imports something for say under 500 rand, the admin of trying to collect the VAT and duties on that is greater than the benefit of that income. But now when you've got a company like Temu that's effectively importing arguably it could be in the billions of rans of goods, collectively that situation is different now. And even worse so, they now competing against other local importers who may be imported in bulk and they were there to pay those VAT and duties so it's not a fair playing field. So there's definitely a point there. But how to fix it is also challenging because there's obviously systems in place that aren't designed to deal with this sort of thing. Yeah. And it can cause source cope, can customs cope with having to analyze every package that's coming to the country? No, I don't think I can, but I mean so they have a program that you can enroll as a private sector companies can enroll into and you get accreditation, call it an AO accreditation. And so essentially I believe they will do and they will continue to pass that responsibility on to other sort of forwarding agents and importers and they will do so as well end up doing spot checks to make sure that they are doing things correctly. But ultimately I think the responsibility will fall on these on the sort of forwarding agent. Yeah. Yeah. I suppose it would be unfair to me ask you whether you think the tariffs are correct and whether the industry needs better. So yeah they're not correct because I've done some orders myself for my season and the fees I've been charged are clearly incorrect because they below 10% and VAT alone is 15% right. So even if there was no duty as far as I can tell it looks incorrect. I was thinking more about whether we should be trying to protect our local taxiles industry. I'm definitely for free trade and but some of my personal view would be as long as it's a fair playing field so it wouldn't be fair that Mr. Price gets taxed in one way when they import and bulk but the individual importing a single item via Sheen does not to me that doesn't make sense. Yeah. Fair enough. What impact do you think companies like Timmy and Sheen operate mainly offshore they've got local fulfillment partners I believe they both work through a company called Buffalo. Are we going to see more of this more Chinese players coming in perhaps players from other markets starting to compete with local retailers but not actually setting up a presence in the country and how do you think it's going to impact the market in the longer term? I think what will probably have to happen is I think there will be certain products that lend themselves towards that. Not everything so many of your mainstream brand products will still go through more traditional supply chains and I don't think that will be as affected but certainly things like clothing and apparel as we've seen and other sort of more generic type products will still I think I think what will have to happen in my opinion is local players will have to adapt and perhaps even just set up their own ways of I think actually Zander has already done that where they will actually also offer imported goods so if you can't beat them join them sort of thing. I think but I don't think it's a clear that's going to shift everything is going to go that way because still you're going to buy Samsung TV or something like that that you're not going to buy that from a Chinese retailer. No, it was interesting to see Amazon said it's also looking at launching a low cost portal or tear on its website. Even us for on Bob Sharp we're experimenting with that we have enabled a few select sellers to ship directly from China to their customers in South Africa using Buffalo logistics. And that seems to be working quite well so I think that's going to be a bit of a hybrid. Right, interesting, interesting. And I wanted to ask you about the competition commissions recent findings they did forget the full name of the investigation they did it had a very long name online what was it called in online into mediation markets or something like that. But they came in for a bit of flak where it was suggested that they were punishing take a lot in particular and that it wouldn't apply to Amazon because Amazon wasn't in the market at the time and that's unfair what is your take on the competition commissions draft findings. And do you think that it's even warranted that the competition commission is interfering in a market that is still relatively new and still a tiny portion of the overall retail market? Yes, I think that's a very good point. The fact that as you said e-commerce is at best six percent. I'm not sure if it's even that high at the moment but let's say it's round about there. So yes, it's a question of should online have so much scrutiny when it's such a small part of the overall market I think it's valid. I also think it's probably was initiated before or the new competition came into the market as well because I think since they would have initiated that investigation a lot has changed. And so I imagine my I'm not sure I don't have any inside information but they probably will back off a bit because I think natural markets has already moved on. Yeah, exactly and I think it's no longer that take a lot if they ever were this threat of dominating the space because clearly they've got there's a lot of competition there already and I'm not talking offline now I'm talking online. So I actually think it's a little bit moot now because natural elements within the market have taken care of it as far as I'm concerned. And so I think there's less reason for the competition commission to be concerned whether it was justified in the first place or not I think I think there were if you looked at other markets there were there are signs where you could look there where there was one big dominant player and there could have been cases where they abused their position. So I think there is some scope for it in particular when that player is a first party seller and a third party seller so where they sell their own goods and they provide a platform for other sellers to specifically small businesses to sell I think there is a good argument for some regulation to be put in place to protect those smaller sellers. Including here in South Africa. Including here in South Africa I mean I think even if it says a preemptive measure because you could see what's happened in other markets. Okay. So it's not clear cuts in my mind but I actually think it's I imagine if I was the competition commission I would be less concerned about abuses because there is so much natural competition already. It's probably going to only intensify moving forward. What would you like to see from the competition commission? What do you think they should be doing in this space? Beyond what you've just mentioned of course. Yeah I think probably more of a hands off approach would be my sort of more approach. More approach. The market developed. Yes. Before you start to regulate. Exactly. Yeah. I would love to on the payment side for them to be more practical on ensuring that the banks allow the new tech to come in and lying there to take off. On the e-commerce side I think. Okay. Let's talk about Amazon. When did they launch now? Is it? Hey. It's even for me I think it was. It's been in the market just over two months now. I think people were expecting a lot from Amazon when it launched in the local market and I think that may have led to a lot of inflated expectations. Certainly they haven't shot the lights out. I must admit I went on there the day it was launched and placed an order and tested it out. I've hardly been back. I have got back occasionally and nothing much changed and I've kind of gone back to my old shopping routines online and Amazon isn't on that list. Do you think it's a flop? No I wouldn't call it a flop. I think it's partly the media to blame. They created this I believe unrealistic expectation and maybe just general consumers in general who maybe have experienced amazon.com and amazon.co.uk created this in their mind this expectation. As far as I'm aware no way did Amazon, South Africa themselves ever say what was going to happen or create any hype themselves. In fact I think of anything they've done played it. It was external parties that created that expectation. If you look at where they've launched in other markets, I don't think as far as I'm aware they've gone with great fanfare in the beginning in any of those markets. There's no reason why that should be any different in South Africa. I personally was always a bit skeptical when people expected this overnight miracle it seemed to take place and I think it's exacerbated even more so by the fact that if you look at other international players that have come into our market and I think you could say dominate our market in areas like search with Google, social media like Facebook and even Netflix in the streaming business. For me there's one big difference there in that those services are purely digital. We see how when we talk e-commerce for the most part there's a physical product involved which adds much more complexity to the process. You've physically got to get that product in this country, you've got to ship it internally. There's all these other elements involved which make it far more challenging and therefore I think it's going to take much longer before you start seeing them having an impact. For sure the Chinese players like Timo and Sheen have had a much bigger impact in the last year than Amazon by a long way. I think one of the things that surprised many people and how I was among them was that they launched without any Amazon products. All their smart M products and smart speakers and all those branded Amazon products which are available ironically on take a lot of other online platforms were not available and as far as I know it's still not available on amazon.co.cda. They did say when they announced that they were going to launch in South Africa they'd also be launching Amazon Prime here that there's no sign of that launching yet. Were you surprised at the limited range that Amazon offered at launch? I think any normal person probably would have expected at least the kindles and the echoes and those sort of things to be available. So yes that was a surprise but also not as much for me because I know what is involved to logistically to make that happen. And support those products. So I'm sure it will come. I think it will come as well but again I think it's going to take longer than most people expect. Yeah it's challenging and how do you like mentioned before about surcharges into townships and things like that that maybe are not as applicable on other markets and they are using third-party careers so you need to figure out how do you factor all that into the model. And I think one of the challenges Amazon would have I'm just speculating here but I mean they're having to fit into software and a system that's been built for other markets for the most part I imagine and I think it would be quite hard to get specific customizations made to how their system works for South Africa which would make up a fraction of their business. So they would have to make what they've got work for South Africa somehow and I can just see challenges all over in getting that right. And I think many South Africans tend to think as Amazon is Netflix the grass is greener on the other side those guys are these global brands they know how to do it better but we've actually got some very smart retailers in this country don't we I mean Amazon is not going to have a walk in the park here even if it came in with everything and do everything immediately it's going to face the resistance take a lot of smart guys Bob groups doing amazing stuff but there are a lot of retailers both online and traditional legacy if I can call them that physical retailers who really do know this retail game and do you think do you think maybe Amazon perhaps underestimated the volume of competition in South Africa market and the sophistication of the local market. I imagine they would have had some insights I'm sure they're very thorough and would have done their research and they would have experienced for example in India and other countries as well lots of competition even to the extent of the likes of Walmart through Flipkart and India right with lots of investment and of course in South Africa we have Massmart which is also owned by Walmart now so I think they would have gone in with the eyes wide open mostly yeah but I imagine they would have been surprised more by the logistical on the ground operational challenges that they face that would be my guess okay okay interesting you mentioned Walmart and Massmart do you see them being a big player in e-commerce in this country yeah I think I take a lot Amazon yeah Massmart they've got the Chinese contenders of course Bob group is trying to do I think as well I think yes I think they all have big ambitions and have a lot of resources behind themselves so big fight coming I think so yeah I think it's a really yeah okay so how does the houses all gonna play out Andy in the next few years we'll put in your look into your crystal ball and tell us where you think this is all going yeah I have to have a guess I think there's going to be multiple players that will end up being successful and maybe some will find more of a niche than others in certain areas but also having said that I think they will be effectively one winner I think I think the nature of of a particular marketplace where you know you have this network effect and the buyers go where the sellers go and the sellers go where the buyers go with it you know I think it tends to form and this is where I think there is some legitimacy in the competition commission keeping an eye on this it tends to form a bit of a natural monopoly and then that can create opportunity for abuse so I think even though they will be multiple players if you look again like at Brazil there's something like eight successful marketplaces in Brazil but Mikado Libre is a dominant one so I think you will I think something similar will end up happening yeah and if I were to have a guess I think that will probably be end up being take a lot take a lot not Amazon based on yeah that's my gut feeling because of their early entry into the market and their understanding of the market yes and I mean they have and their logistics in particular I mean something like they could change I guess an Amazon could come and buy a local logistics company right and I think that could change the the game completely but take a lot for example on Mr. D and have built up that business over many years and have you know a very large local operation and then all the knowledge and the experience and obviously not don't lack resources in having aspects as Amazon is clearly working through third party logistics firms whereas take a lot has seen it as important to control that logistics value chain is does that mean does that lead to take a lot winning in the end because they control the logistics how important is that I think it's critical I think the logistics is the most critical there's many aspects in order to operate successfully in the e-commerce space but I think logistics is the most important so it's for sure a huge opportunity but I mean in other markets Amazon have built their own logistics infrastructure as well so it's not unheard of so yes it could happen in South Africa I think it's a long way off yeah okay that's an earning always good to talk to you Andy Higgins Andy Higgins is MD of Bob group thanks for sharing your insights on the e-commerce market and I look forward to seeing how this market develops in the coming years thanks thank you me too [Music]