{"id":4728,"date":"2008-08-05T16:13:00","date_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:13:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2008-08-05T16:13:00","modified_gmt":"2008-08-05T14:13:00","slug":"online-retail-heats-up","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/internet\/4728-online-retail-heats-up.html","title":{"rendered":"Online retail heats up"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A new online technology retail site launched yesterday, aiming to become&nbsp; Southern Africa&#8217;s biggest online IT retailer. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.click2buyit.com\" target=\"_blank\">Click2BuyIT.com<\/a> was founded by Jean-Pierre Schmidtke, who spent the past eight years in the UK working for a large European online retailer. <\/p>\n<p>Using that experience, Schmidtke says the company is &quot;confident that in a short time we will become the leading online provider of IT products to the private and corporate sector throughout South Africa, as well as the sub Saharan region.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>Entering the market at this point, however, means that Click2BuyIT.com faces stiff competition. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;We see our competitive edge being our experience, price, efficient delivery and our ability to distribute into the rest of Africa,&quot; says Schmidtke.<\/p>\n<p>With online retail sales growing more than 35% in 2007 and broadband services such as ADSL and 3G becoming popular, Schmidtke sees huge potential for his company in SA and is expecting his company&#8217;s turnover to top R43m in the first year of operation.<\/p>\n<p>Click2BuyIT.com launches with a product range of 92 different brands and more than 143 000 products, says Schmidtke. The store stocks a full range of products from computers, software and peripherals through to games, films and music. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;We intend growing our product portfolio within a short space of time to include over 600 000 products,&quot; says Schmidtke. <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/vb\/showthread.php?t=130126\"><strong>ONline retail discussion<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>New online IT shop enters SA market with big plans<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-internet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4728"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4728"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4728\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4728"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4728"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4728"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}