Waffarly: Shopping Combined with Saving
Updated 9/26/2023 8:00:00 AM
Arab Finance: Affiliate marketing platforms are playing a significant role in Egypt's digital transformation and revenue generation. The Egyptian government is also committed to moving towards a digital economy and accelerating the country's digital transformation, which presents significant opportunities for the growth of affiliate marketing platforms.
Recently, Arab Finance conducted an interview with Amr Gamal, the CEO of Waffarly, an affiliate marketing platform that aggregates offers, discounts, and various products in one place across multiple categories. In this interview, Gamal discusses the market need behind establishing Waffarly, the services that differentiate Waffarly from its competitors, and the company's future plans.
1- What is the market need behind establishing Waffarly?
In light of the challenging economic conditions that the Arab market has been facing and the global recession resulting from various changes and conflicts since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we have observed that most major brands, as well as smaller ones, have suffered a significant decline in their sales. This may be attributed to their lack of digital readiness and the shock of not having online stores and applications to compensate effectively for the drop in physical store sales. On one side, digital transformation takes time to be implemented, especially for large entities and brands.
On the other side, those who were well-prepared with an effective online presence multiplied their sales when the pandemic first emerged. At that point, everyone realized that having an online store was not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Furthermore, it has become necessary for all brands to triple their advertising and marketing budgets, whether to promote their products online or to invest in assembling a high-caliber digital marketing team to compensate for losses. And this is where we decided to establish Waffarly, the affiliate marketing platform.
Recently, we have been in contact with global brands, especially in Egypt and the Gulf region, to introduce the concept of affiliate marketing. This concept is fundamentally based on selling to others without upfront payment. The brand pays a small commission for each sale made through Waffarly for its products, whether through its online store or application. This approach is profitable for both parties and is quite simple and uncomplicated. If Waffarly markets and sells your products, you will pay a commission on sales. If Waffarly markets the products without making a sale, you will not lose anything. Instead, you benefit from free promotion of your brand and free traffic to your website.
2- What are the services that differentiate Waffarly from its competitors? And how do you plan to stay ahead of the competition?
Affiliate marketing as an idea is widely spread internationally, much more than in the Arab region. However, you often find the traditional form of affiliate marketing, where affiliate networks bring brands and young marketers from around the world to market the brand`s products, and commissions are distributed to the network and marketers at varying rates. These marketers typically promote these products through traditional advertising.
However, we have taken a more professional approach by building a platform consisting of a website and a mobile application that aggregates offers, discounts, and various products in one place across multiple categories such as fashion, beauty products, e-commerce, travel apps, and more. Additionally, we use the latest marketing techniques to emotionally connect the audience with the WAFFARLY application, emphasizing its importance as a part of daily life.
As for competition, most competitors at our professional level are different from the Waffarly concept. Waffarly provides offers and discounts for online stores, unlike others who offer discounts within physical stores only and a cashback system.
As professional marketers, we also implement different marketing methods, some of which may be new to the Arab market, which we believe will place us at the forefront of competition in a short time.
3- How do you stay up-to-date with industry trends and developments, and how have the various payment options, like BNPL, affected your business?
As a team of marketing professionals, we must stay up-to-date with the latest trends, payment methods, and all aspects of e-commerce. This is because it can significantly impact the shopping process for various brand products, either positively or negatively.
The company deals with each brand as if we own it, so it must always be in a state of continuous marketing development. Since decision-making here cannot be made individually, we coordinate with the brand itself. The company is constantly exploring modern services that we should adopt. These could include online installment payments and other developments currently being witnessed.
These innovations have been crucial in increasing sales by over 50% in various industries because they bring in new customer segments that were not initially considering a purchase and cannot afford a substantial upfront payment at the same time.
4- What is the process for selecting offers and coupons on Waffarly, and how do you ensure their quality?
Since its inception, Waffarly has successfully attracted large, well-known brands in Egypt and the Gulf region. This is not to say that we disregard modern or emerging brands. Rather, it is a strategic decision aimed at fostering a trusting relationship between Waffarly and its users. We believe that by partnering with established brands, we can provide our users with a sense of familiarity and reliability.
However, we are in the process of developing a program for new and emerging brands. This program will allow the founders of these brands to join Waffarly under specific criteria and conditions. For example, they must provide a unique or uncommon service to the users. Additionally, the company must have been in the market for a year, made sales (not necessarily in large quantities), and demonstrated some growth over time. This means that these brands have a promising future. So, we are always open to working with new brands that align with our values and mission.
5- What is your strategy for attracting and retaining customers on Waffarly?
In reality, we have several methods for attracting the audience of the brands we contract with, including the known and advertised ones, as well as the unknown ones that must remain undisclosed because they simply distinguish us in reaching the audience with minimal costs and the highest quality.
We can say that the methods for attracting known customers include advertisements and optimizing search engines to rank higher for keywords related to the brand's products that they want to market. There is also marketing through WhatsApp, Telegram, and social media in general.
As you may already know, numerous online distribution channels vary from one country to another based on the type of audience and its geographic and behavioral characteristics.
6- How does Waffarly ensure that its website is user-friendly and easy to navigate?
We leave nothing to guesswork or experience alone. There are important factors that we take into consideration when evaluating the user-friendliness of our website and mobile application. We employ modern technological tools that capture the screen usage of many random visitors while they browse our website. Additionally, we utilize heat maps to ensure the best user experience possible on the Waffarly website and application.
7- Which regions does Waffarly operate in, and which is the most profitable for the company?
Let's say we have a big dream of being available in every country worldwide someday. However, we break down this dream into multiple stages and aim to progress with each successful phase.
We have decided to start with Egypt and the Arab Gulf countries, particularly Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, and Jordan. Our goal is to eventually enter the American and European markets.
Regarding the best countries, undoubtedly, with Saudi Arabia's Vision 2030, the Kingdom has become the focal point of the global market during this period, without a doubt.
8-Can you shed light on the company’s financial performance?
Before diving into any numbers, it is important to note that WAFFARLY is a limited company registered with the Egyptian Investment Authority for the year 2023. Its three partners had the privilege of working in the same field in the freelance business before its establishment in 2020. We can only say that, for instance, we have achieved sales exceeding EGP 5 million in fashion-related brands alone. We have also provided approximately EGP 500,000 in benefits to end consumers through the offers and discounts we offer via our website and mobile application.
9-What are the biggest challenges facing e-commerce in Egypt? And how does Waffarly plan to overcome them?
Despite Egypt's excellent purchasing power, we still do not possess the same online shopping culture as Western countries and some Arab Gulf states. A significant number of Egyptians still have worries about using their credit cards for online purchases.
We believe that we need awareness campaigns to educate people on how to safely shop online and choose a store to buy from without worry. Moreover, the economic downturn during this period poses a direct threat to sales, whether online or in physical stores.
We also believe that the solution lies in educating people about their purchasing priorities and focusing on essential goods, as well as providing exclusive solutions and discounts to help them meet their buying needs easily. Waffarly, at its core, was created to address this issue.
10-Finally, what are Waffarly's future plans?
We have a clear plan, which is to initially focus on the Arab market to achieve significant sales and subsequently generate substantial financial returns. We will then reinvest these returns into more challenging markets, such as the American and European markets.
Furthermore, many ideas ultimately align with Waffarly's concept, which is to provide high-quality products for well-known brands at a lower price.
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