Esquire, the award-winning ICT distributor of digital lifestyle products, expects to sign up 2 000 of its resellers for its recently-launched virtual reseller network (VRN) by the end of the year, making a “marked impact” on the ecommerce marketplace in South Africa with its world first offering.Asgar Mahomed ,Managing Director of Esquire who is steering the process , said the company’s VRN is a world first in the “technology marketplace” and is expected to turn the traditional reseller market on its head.Since its launch of its VRN in the fourth quarter of last year, Esquire has signed up more than 100 resellers, expecting this number to rise to 2000 by the end of the year as the company concentrates more fully on its “VRN reseller campaign”. 

By launching its VRN Esquire has essentially provided any participating reseller with immediate access to the company’s entire stock holding without “having to invest a cent in stock”. Esquire’s stock holding is updated directly to the reseller’s web-site at regular intervals – often as regularly as every three minutes.

The VRN solution is run by e-commerce specialist, ImproWEB, with whom Esquire has an exclusive agreement.

Mahomed said up to Five  resellers  are currently signing on every day, but this sign-on rate would increase rapidly as the company focused increasingly on its VRN campaign. “The only challenge we have now is getting the resellers’ e-commerce web-sites out there and live. But we have already put a plan of action together by increasing the number of web-site designers, as well as outsourcing some of the web-site designs to help with the workload.

“We are positive that we will reach our goal of 2000 signed-on resellers by the end of the year and, with this in mind, we believe we will have a huge impact on the ecommerce space in SA. A little as a year ago there were only a handful of fully-fledged ecommerce sites in the country – and we will soon boast over 2000 actively trading.” 

More information on Esquire’s VRN  

Commenting further on the company’s VRN solution, Mahomed said that when an end user places an order with a reseller the purchase request is seamlessly routed to the company’s back office system, which then automatically informs  the courier company - who then fetches the items from our warehouse and dispatches it directly to the end user.

“One of the main advantages of this software solution is that its in-built intelligence allows it to detect the location of the end user. If the end user is in Cape Town the courier company will, for instance, fetch the stock from Esquire’s Cape Town branch and deliver it directly to the end user in that region – hence saving a substantial amount of money in courier costs. The software, in other words, will automatically choose the shortest delivery route.”

This means the company’s resellers don’t have to hold any of their own stock as they are given what they require – when they need it.