Jumia has cancelled the pinking of items at offline pick-up points. Jumia customers will be forced to accept deliveries either at home or at the office. This means that online customers will have to dig deeper into their pockets to shop on platform.
Pick-up points have been popular with most customers since they offer the flexibility of picking items at time appropriate to them. The other advantage has been that it is cheaper to pick up the items at these points.
Cutting on operational costs
The company has been keen to reduce its operational cost after announcing earlier that it had made a Ksh.14.9 billion loss before tax, which it attributed to increased investment on the business.
At the pick-up points, it cost a flat rate of Ksh.150.00, whereas for home and office deliveries, the shipping cost is anywhere between Ksh. 300.00 to Ksh. 15000.00. This depends with the shipping distance.
Despite making losses, Jumia has seen its sales grow up to Ksh. 62.95 billion driven by large number of customers. It has over 20 million customers on its platform and it is the largest E-commerce platform in Kenya.
This latest move by company shows that it is keen on checking its ballooning costs.
Jumia has presence in 47 countries including Kenya and it has brands such as Jumia, Jumia Travel, Jumia Foods, Jumia Deals, Jumia House, Jumia Cars and Jumia Jobs.
Jumia Kenya is 6 years old in Kenya having first set up shop in 2013 in Kenya. It has its headquarters at Kaka House Westlands and employs thousands of people. Jumia has numerous pick-up stations dotted around the country.
It yet to be seen how customers will respond to this new development though there could be cancelling of orders on its platform.
