1906 Mall: The Luxury Online Market

1906Mall is an online shopping platform which aims at giving shoppers an experience that is both personalized and soothing.  Yorubas have an adage, “Oja Oyingbo, ko mo pe enikan o wa” which literally translates to ”Oyingbo market does not know if a particular individual does not come”, and this often leads to the improper treatment of customers by sellers who believe if YOU don’t buy, someone else would. I am strongly against that kind of mistreatment, and that is why we endeavor to treat each and every customer like (s)he is the only one we have.

I start selling fashion items on Kaymu and Konga earlier this year, and while selling, I had my difficulties which were as a result of the fact that I had very little to no control over how operations on the platform goes. This made a couple of my friends suggest to me to also create my own online mall and sell my products on it, so I will have full control over affairs of the platform. I also noticed that the shopping experience which buyers on platforms like Kaymu and Konga had was somewhat lacking in some respects. For instance, a buyer browses through the online mall, sees a shoe he likes, he clicks it to purchase it, browses further and sees a wrist watch he likes, clicks to purchase that too, and when he is done placing his orders, he gets not just one, but two or more order confirmation calls because these items were probably listed by different sellers. And depending on how many different buyers he buys from, he gets just as many calls, which I really am not sure all customers would want, especially when you are someone who just decided to give the online shopping a first try. Also, keep in mind that since each seller is located at different locations, this also attracts an extra delivery fee for each item purchased from each seller. There is also the issue of these items arriving on different days, which isn’t really that awesome a shopping experience if you’d ask me. The list of challenges goes on and on, as different buyers have different temperaments and all it takes is just a wrong seller with a bad approach to dealing with customers to put off a buyer (especially a first timer) from wanting to ever shop online again. These were the loopholes I felt I could cover by creating my own online mall and giving shoppers a more personalized shopping experience with as little hassle as possible. 

You see, back in 2011/2012, my friend, Tony Adedeji/Oladeji (he’ll kill me for not getting his surname right again for the umpteenth time) and I decided to go into business together. We would occasionally come together to brainstorm about what our business idea would be. We thought about it all, from creating a membership entertainment club to running a laundry service to owning an unconventional fast-food restaurant, the list of ideas were endless. Then came the issue of giving it a name to go with, which happens to be an issue especially when there are two parties involved. A name that flies for me might not necessarily be catchy for you, and vice-versa. I don’t think it took too long before we both realize we had something in common… our birthdays. Thing is, we were both born on the 19th of June and decided, “Hey, why not name our business 1906?”.

The name seemed catchy, the idea being more of his than mine, but I loved it nonetheless, because it was something we could both relate with to equal extents.

 Our idea somehow fell on the ears of my dear friend, Awe Ayoola, who at the time knew more about the fact that I was going to be a part of a business named 1906 than what exactly the 1906 business was going to be. Time went by and the idea of a 1906 business began to wane as my friend Tony went to the UK for his masters in architecture. But there was hardly a month that went by that my dear friend, Awe Ayoola never asked me “Come Sunkanmi, what’s up with 1906 nah?!” The more he brought it up, the more the name grew on me till it eventually stuck. So as soon as the opportunity to own an online mall presented itself, I didn’t need to do too much brainstorming to come up with a name.