Four years after its launch in 2014, leading Tunisian online retailer FounaShop has opened its doors to the Tunisian media and shared some insight on how its grown and the state of online retail in Tunisia.
The key data
- Address: www.founa.com
- Launched: 2014
- Turnover: 2.7m dinar ($1.03m) in 2017
- Employees: 50
- SKUs: 11,000
- Registered customers: 5,000
- Orders delivered: 41,000
- Coverage: mostly Tunis, but increasingly also Nabeul, Hammamet, Sousse and even Monastir.
Start up
FounaShop was first conceived in 2012 and officially launched in 2014 by Karim Skik, a Tunisian entrepreneur, his wife and sister. From its 2000m² warehouse in the Bhar Lazrag industrial zone in Marsa, Tunis, the company offers 11,000 products, mostly in the grocery space. In 2015, the company received financial backing from Tunisian investors Ingenium Fund.
Originally, FounaShop required customers to be “sponsored”, i.e. recommended by customers who were already registered. This limited usership but while the company was in start up mode, but also added to a sense of exclusivity.
Target audience
FounaShop is targeted at wealthy Tunisian consumers and French expats, and specialises in fresh products, organic and natural products, and premium grocery products (including cheeses, baked goods and charcuterie). Increasingly it is also offering non-grocery products including textiles, kitchen equipment, small electricals, homewares and stationery. FounaShop also offers a pick up and drop off dry cleaning/laundry service.
The company also offers a loyalty program called Founa Club, tiered into gold, silver and platinum groups, each offering different benefits and exclusivity. FounaShop is also developing a marketplace on its site, to allow partner businesses to leverage its delivery capabilities. So far it has signed up five businesses.
Future outlook
By the standards of modern online retailing Founashop is tiny. It thrives at the moment because most Tunisian consumers don’t want to purchase groceries online and don’t trust an online retailer to pick the freshest fruit, vegetables etc. Because of this, leading supermarket chains in Tunisia such as Monoprix and Carrefour don’t offer online retail – either click and collect or delivery.
As such, FounaShop pretty much owns the space and its viability hasn’t yet been battle tested. When leading supermarket chains do introduce online retailing, FounaShop’s survival will rest on its quality credentials and its ability to continue to satisfy time poor and wealthy consumers’ demands for premium products delivered to the home.
