By Nqobile Dludla
CAPE TOWN (Reuters) - U.S. e-commerce giant Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) opened on Thursday a walk-in centre in South Africa that it says will help its independent sellers attract more customers and expand their businesses, while it also seeks to gain market share.
For Amazon - which is striving to catch up with market-leader Takealot, owned by Naspers - the centre can increase its product range, increasing potential revenue.
"The biggest thing is product breadth for our customers. We just want to have loads of products that people can buy," Robert Koen, Managing Director of Amazon Sub-Saharan Africa told Reuters after the launch event.
More than 60% of sales in Amazon's stores globally are from independent sellers – most of which are small- and medium-sized businesses.
Located at Amazon's head office in Cape Town, the centre offers local sellers a range of services, such as on-the-spot registration to sell on Amazon.co.za, training, product imaging and cataloguing assistance, and shipping and logistics support.
The Seattle retailer launched in South Africa last year May, its first Sub-saharan African country.
Speaking on performance during the holiday season, Koen said: "I think Q4 (fourth quarter) was actually very encouraging. We exceeded all the goals that we set for ourselves."
He added first-time shoppers were returning to its online store and had given good feedback on the speed of delivery.