Project Summary
Problem
Kenya and Africa in generally is experiencing substantial growth in e-commerce; however, online merchants struggle with trust issues and high operational costs associated with not having brick and mortar locations. Rent-a-shelf spaces solve these issues; however, inefficiencies other than transparency problems spoil customer experiences, leading to increased churn and negative reviews.
Solution
We developed a comprehensive mobile application designed to handle the day-to-day operations of rent a shelf businesses.
The mobile app digitizes operations for rent-a-shelf businesses:
- Real-time inventory tracking with low-stock alerts.
- Centralized communication for local/global sellers.
- Daily payment reconciliation ensuring transparency.
- Quick pickup verification, slashing wait times.
Design Process
My design process for this project included the following;
Contextual study
Our research pointed out the problems online sellers face, such as trust issues and high operational costs. It also revealed inefficiencies in existing rent-a-shelf models, leading to customer churn and negative reviews.
To get this info, we talked to people who own rent-a-shelf businesses and online sellers. We also checked out social media chats and what the competition was doing.
Design study
Our app was aimed at digitizing operations. We used a scenario-based design method to understand the customer journey, with features including
- Seller onboarding,
- Inventory management,
- Sales recording,
- Pickup management,
- Last-mile delivery,
- Payments, and a rent payment system.
Appropriation study
Our go-to-market strategy focused on a data-driven approach, targeting early adopters in Nairobi CBD and offering a free trial to encourage adoption. Initial efforts involved;
- Onboarding rent-a-shelf businesses,
- Integrating business intelligence tools for tracking, and
- Hiring a customer success specialist
The study also highlighted the need for improvements such as bulk upload features, strategies to drive seller adoption, and exploring partnerships with payment and logistics companies
Impact & Metrics
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Overview
Rafu Zetu was created with the vision of enabling small online businesses to efficiently manage their inventory, enhance customer trust, and optimize order fulfillment through technology.
Our primary goal was to build software that powers the daily operations of rent a shelf stores while simultaneously offering online merchants a seamless way to store, display, and fulfill orders.
The product aimed to bridge the gap between online businesses and physical storage solutions, enhancing transparency, efficiency, and trust.
My Role
As the Founder, my responsibilities encompassed working with a team of two engineers and a CTO, who was also my co-founder. Collaboration within our team was crucial to ensuring that our product met the needs of online sellers and rent a shelves effectively. My personal responsibilities were to;
- Conducting market research to understand the needs of online sellers and rent a shelves.
- Engaging with customers to uncover pain points and refine the product.
- Directing product strategy and development.
- Overseeing product management, ensuring the platform met user needs.
- Leading sales and marketing efforts.
- Designing the platform to be user-friendly, efficient, and reliable.
Contextual Study: The Problem
Kenya and Africa's online selling market is rapidly growing, yet online merchants and rent a shelf stores face significant operational challenges. The lack of a physical presence for online sellers affects trust and brings about operational difficulties, such as high delivery costs. Once they secure a rent a shelf to address these issues, inefficiencies in the rent a shelf model—beyond just lacking a transparent view of their business—can negatively impact the customer experience, leading to churn, bad reviews, and disappointments.
Inventory Managament
- Frequent discrepancies between stock records and physical inventory.
- Inventory management required a full day of effort, leading to operational inefficiencies
Time & Inefficiency
- On average, rent a shelf attendants spend 5-10 minutes serving pickup clients, leading to inefficiencies.
- Long queues, compromising the sellers customer experience and confusions leading to misplaced orders or wrong sales.
Lack of Transparency & Visibility
- Online sellers outside the country had no way to track stock, payments, and orders in real-time.
- Online sellers outside the country had no way to track stock, payments, and orders in real-time.
- Lack of visibility on deliveries, making tracking difficult
The inefficiencies in managing rent a shelf operations and online businesses were leading to lost sales, operational headaches, and a lack of trust in e-commerce transactions.
Market & Customer Discovery Process
Our market research followed a structured approach to deeply understand the needs and challenges faced by online sellers and rent a shelf businesses. This process was crucial in identifying the gaps that Rafu Zetu aimed to address and ensuring product-market fit.
Customer Discovery
We conducted in-depth interviews with rent a shelf owners and online sellers to gather firsthand insights into their biggest pain points. This involved understanding their operational struggles, inefficiencies in inventory tracking, and challenges with customer management. By listening to their concerns, we were able to shape Rafu Zetu into a solution that directly addressed their needs.
Social Media Sentiment Analysis
Since many online sellers operate through social media platforms, we analyzed discussions on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram to identify recurring frustrations. We looked at complaints about rent a shelf experiences, issues with deliveries, and concerns about inventory discrepancies. This provided valuable qualitative data that confirmed the extent of the problem and the demand for a transparent, technology-driven solution.
Competitor Analysis
We studied existing rent a shelf operations and their processes to identify inefficiencies and areas where technology could improve business operations. We analyzed competitors' strengths and weaknesses, uncovering gaps such as lack of real-time tracking, poor integration with delivery services, and reliance on manual record-keeping. This analysis helped us refine our unique value proposition and position Rafu Zetu as a superior alternative to traditional methods.
Market Size & FindingsÂ
Kenya's e-commerce landscape is experiencing rapid transformation, driven by the increasing adoption of digital commerce and the expansion of social commerce. The market presents significant opportunities for businesses that can bridge operational gaps and enhance trust between online sellers and consumers. Below are some key statistics that highlight the growth and potential of this sector:
- Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) Increase: The E-commerce Gross Merchandise Value in Kenya is predicted to rise from $2.3 billion in 2023 to $3.8 billion by 2028.
- Projected Market Value in 2024: Kenya's e-commerce market is projected to reach $900 million in 2024.
- Trust remains a significant barrier to e-commerce growth, with an estimated 30% of potential buyers avoiding online purchases due to fraud concerns.
- High delivery costs and logistical inefficiencies make e-commerce operations expensive.
- Currently, social commerce accounts for 10% of all e-commerce sales in Kenya. This share is expected to rise to over 17% in the next three to four years.
49% of Kenyans have made purchases through social media platforms like WhatsApp, Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Twitter, highlighting its significant role in consumer behavior. Read
Design Study: Rafu Zetu App
To address these challenges, we developed a comprehensive mobile application designed to handle the day-to-day operations of rent a shelf businesses. Mobile was chosen as the platform since the entire business operation runs on mobile devices, and smartphone penetration is particularly high in Kenya, especially in Nairobi.
System Design Considerations
- Frictionless UX/UI – Designed for ease of use since store attendants and sellers are often busy.
- Efficiency as a Selling Point – The system had to save time and improve operational flow.
- Reliability & Trust – Prompt notifications and real-time tracking were crucial for transparency.
Design
We employed a scenario-based design approach to understand the customer journey and account for various edge cases. By mapping out real-life user scenarios, we were able to anticipate potential challenges and refine the user experience accordingly.
Scenario 1
Juma, a busy professional in Nairobi, runs an online fashion store.
He partners with Rafu and leverages their rent-a-shelf services for storing and selling his products. Juma often travels for work, so managing his business poses a significant challenge.
With Rafu, Juma can easily track his inventory, manage customer pickups, and handle deliveries from a centralized app.
This means he no longer has to worry about coordinating with multiple parties, and he gets daily financial reconciliations.
One day, he bulk uploads his new inventory via an Excel sheet to Rafu, which then converts these into pickup orders and notifies customers, simplifying his operations even further.
Scenario 2
Sheila owns a rent-a-shelf store in Nairobi and services several local online sellers. She faces challenges like keeping track of different sellers’ inventories, constant back-and-forth communication via WhatsApp, and cumbersome financial reconciliations at the end of the day.
After Implementing Rafu:
- Inventory Management: All sellers’ inventories are managed digitally, eliminating manual counts. She can see stock levels at a glance and gets notifications when stock is low.
- Enhanced Communication: Sellers use the Rafu app to perform all necessary actions. This centralized communication improves coordination and allows her to extend services to sellers outside Kenya, like those in the U.S. or Europe.
- Payment Reconciliation: At the end of each day, Rafu generates a detailed reconciliation report. Sheila knows exactly how much she owes each seller, ensuring financial accuracy and transparency.
- Efficient Pickup Process: When a customer arrives for a pickup, Sheila quickly verifies and hands over the products using the Rafu app. No need to contact the seller each time, significantly reducing service time and improving customer satisfaction.
High Fidelity designs
1. Seller Onboarding - After registration, seller joins a store and add products .
2. Inventory Management - Real-time tracking of stock levels and sales.
3. Sales Recording - Sellers and attendants can log sales, ensuring transparency.
4. Pickup Management - Streamlined order retrieval for customers.
5. Last-Mile Delivery - Making delivery efficient and easy to track.
6. Payments - Immediate updates on payments and end of day reconciliations
7. Rent Payment System - Enabling seamless payments between sellers and rent a shelf stores.
Appropriation
Go-To-Market Strategy
Our go-to-market strategy was designed to ensure a steady adoption of Rafu Zetu by rent a shelf businesses and online sellers. We focused on an incremental, data-driven approach that allowed us to refine the product while gradually scaling adoption.
Target Early Adopters
We began by engaging rent a shelf businesses that had previously participated in our customer discovery process. This provided us with a warm entry point, as these businesses already recognized the need for a technological solution to streamline their operations.
City-Based Expansion
We launched our operations in Nairobi CBD, a strategic location with a high concentration of online sellers and rent a shelf businesses. We took a mall-by-mall approach, onboarding businesses within key commercial centers where social commerce activity was highest. This ensured that we built a strong presence in one area before expanding outward.
Initial Free Trial
To encourage adoption and eliminate the initial financial risk for rent a shelves, we offered a two-month free trial. This provided business owners an opportunity to experience the efficiency and benefits of Rafu Zetu before committing to a paid subscription.
Pricing Strategy
- We tested various pricing models through customer feedback.
- Arrived at a $2 per seller per month subscription model.
- Payments were processed through M-Pesa subscriptions for easy transactions.
Market Adoption & Growth
Our adoption process began with extensive outreach to rent a shelf businesses. We engaged with over 30 rent a shelf owners to understand their interest in the platform. While major rent a shelves showed strong interest, many preferred to purchase and control the technology themselves, which did not align with our subscription model. As a result, we opted to start with smaller rent a shelves that were more open to integrating our solution.
We successfully onboarded 12 rent a shelves that were willing to test and provide feedback, allowing us to fine-tune the product before broader market expansion. This approach helped us refine our features based on real-world use cases, ensuring that the platform addressed the critical pain points of inventory tracking, customer management, and operational efficiency.
- Successfully onboarded 12 rent a shelves and 62 online shops.
- Introduced bulk upload, flexible pricing options, and barcode scanning in response to user feedback.
- Improved operational efficiency for participating sellers, reducing the time spent on inventory and order fulfillment.
Analytics & Testing
To track engagement and sales, we integrated Business Intelligence tools into Rafu Zetu. This allowed us to monitor user behavior and understand how sellers interacted with the platform.
We also hired a Customer Success specialist to continuously engage with users, assist with onboarding, and gather valuable insights. Through this process, we identified key challenges and implemented necessary improvements:
Onboarding Challenges
Initially, the app only allowed for single product uploads, making the process tedious. In response, we quickly developed and launched a bulk upload feature to improve efficiency.
User Engagement
Some sellers were not consistently using the app, which affected operations. Since the platform's effectiveness depended on active seller participation, we focused on strategies to drive adoption and ensure consistent usage.
Major Business Challenges Faced
- Integration into Daily Operations – Some rent a shelves were slow to adopt the system into their workflows. Since the platform was hugely dependent on seller usage, integrating a new behavior or operation meant slow adoption, and in some cases, no usage at all.
- Ownership Conflicts – Larger rent a shelves wanted to buy and control the technology rather than adopting a subscription model.
- Limited Market Size – The number of rent a shelves in Kenya was smaller than anticipated.
- Pain Point Misalignment – Initially targeted online sellers, but the real pain was rent a shelves managing multiple sellers.
- Small Inventory Issue – Many online sellers had minimal stock, making full software adoption unnecessary.
Key Learnings & Next Steps
Redefine the persona/customer
Targeting rent a shelves as primary customers would have been more strategic. To reduce overdependence on seller adoption—since sellers did not always experience severe pain points.This flexibility can help increase engagement without forcing a behavioral shift.
Scale - Horizontally/Vertically
The business model required scaling beyond Nairobi or rent a shelf to reach a more substantial customer base.
Partnerships
Exploring partnerships with payment and logistics companies would enhance service offerings.
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