ileycom

In Africa, agriculture and crafts are the first and second most important sectors in terms of job creation and employment according to the UN. However, crafts and traditional agriculture only contribute to around 10% of the total GDP on the continent, which represents nothing if compared to the great number of people who are supposed to make a living out of these activities.  

Among the many reasons which explain these figures, we can mention the uneven competition African producers and craftsmen face, with big companies producing more and at a smaller cost, and at the same time the high production costs for SME’s which engage in sustainable and/ or traditional activities. In many places, traditional African crafts suffer from a lack of visibility, and despite their strong quality, have become harder to sell despite the global increase in tourism (aside from the COVID-19 period).  

Moreover, most SMEs in Africa, until now, have failed to embrace the change in consumption habits, which have become much more digitalized than before. Because they have not been well accompanied, and because of a global lack of public funding on the continent, small and medium enterprises haven’t embraced online tools that could open new horizons for them. It becomes more and more important as the market and demand for responsible products with a true history is growing in Europe, in North America but also in African cities and in the Middle East, but cannot be yet satisfied by the current offer, which is mainly focused on very expensive goods.  

For all these reasons, many SMEs engaged in crafts or responsible agriculture are in danger because of their very low profitability rate and their vulnerability to external shocks, such as Covid or climatic catastrophes for example, but however dispose of enormous perspectives if they manage to modify their selling patterns and are able to take advantage of new ways of selling. 

To expand their horizons and open new markets, the project aims to tackle the e-commerce challenges faced by African green and social entrepreneurs and food producers. These entrepreneurs often face total lack of advice in the process of creating online stores but also receiving guidance on online payments, shipping logistics, and customs procedures which is an important obstacle to the sustainability of their projects. 

To respond to this challenge, we have created a marketplace to which these sellers can add their products and sell globally. They even have access to Amazon and Etsy thanks to our omnichannel nature.  

By offering them a chance to engage fully in their activity, and by facilitating their access to eco-friendly markets, ILEY'COM creates business opportunities, stimulating demand for their products. It leads to increased production and workforce growth, thereby contributing to local employment and green growth. Furthermore, the implementation of free training programs enhances the skills of social entrepreneurs and responsible food producers, increasing their chances of success and fostering potential hirings in their communities. It also has a strong social impact on the professional insertion of women in economic circuits. Our vision is to become the leading marketplace in Africa that connects sellers committed to craftsmanship and the environment with buyers worldwide.  

We showcase a range of eco-friendly and authentic products, designed by committed creators, providing buyers with more than just a product but a unique story and authenticity. ILEY'COM also stands out as an impact-driven company, focusing on training and supporting social entrepreneurs and food producers. Our mission encompasses skills development, product promotion, and contributes to the growth of the local economy. 

We target artisans, eco entrepreneurs, artists and creators of handmade and eco-friendly products in Africa that can join the platform and sell their products. We also target responsible consumers all around the world. There is a global trend for ethical consumption and support to traditional crafts and ways of producing, and it is the goal of ILEY’COM to promote these behaviors through the support we bring to entrepreneurs and by reaching out to consumers. 

Regarding the impact we make on the entrepreneurs we help, we believe it is 100% positive. In fact, by offering them a new tool to sell online and reach new consumers all over the world, we believe this will contribute positively to the sustainability of their economic endeavors and promote local employment in communities. Moreover, by encouraging entrepreneurship through its training program, ILEY’COM will support youth and woman employment, in a sector where they already make a very significant contribution (more than 60% workers in the crafts sector are women for example) without always being compensated for their work. ILEY’COM will benefit these actors as it will generate income and stabilize economic activities, therefore leading to more wealth distribution.  

Our company is based in Sfax, in the South of Tunisia, and our co-founders were all born and raised in the country, which explains why they are so motivated to make a positive impact in the country and all over the continent if they manage to gain traction.  

ILEY’COM started as a training program to support craftsmen and responsible entrepreneurs, but initially it did not include any plan to create a marketplace. As we met more and more green entrepreneurs in Tunisia, we realized they lacked the opportunity to sell online easily, given the hardships of joining international platforms such as Amazone or Etsy for someone who isn’t that comfortable with online procedures and online marketing. For this reason, we created the ILEY’COM platform to help our beneficiaries, and the platform started to grow. We are convinced that the project is useful for them, and the simple fact that many of the sellers on our platform benefit from the marketplace is an indicator of our utility. ILEY’COM is an entry gate to e-commerce, nationally and internationally, and is therefore an essential tool for all the responsible entrepreneurs who wish to make a change, and we know this because every day, we speak with our beneficiaries and exchange about our project. We also believe that we are credible actors because we work closely with local communities, and our social impact is quantified each year.  

In addition to our local nature, and the fact that most of our employes grew up in Africa, we also brought in internationals to bring new perspectives and allow a climate of cultural exchange within the team but also in our business relations with our partners, just as the ILEY’COM marketplace is supposed to foster exchanges between African entrepreneurs and the rest of the world. 

Regarding our specific skills, the startup core team is diversified, with three main departments. The team is constituted of two co-founders, two digital webmaster marketers and a community manager, one full time developer for the website, one office manager and logistics specialist, two content creators and one grants and partnerships officer. This diversity allows us to work on very different aspects at the same time, from website managing to organizing training for the entrepreneurs and craftsmen we work with. The team was also constituted in this way for our project to expand its scope. It is not only an online marketplace but a community which promotes sustainable ways of producing and consuming across Africa. 

We are in pilot phase as the marketplace has been launched and records new users at an almost daily rate. We reunite a community of around 500 sellers in tunisia, and have already started to sell worldwide. We record around 20 orders per week, and for the moment we are searching for support which will allow us to expand the team and develop the solution in new countries, such as Morocco and Senegal.  

Our interest in participating in this program lies in our desire to immerse ourselves within its network and community, contributing as active problem-solvers. We highly value the specialized capacity workshops and leadership coaching it offers. Access to in-kind and pro bono resources, including software licenses and legal services, greatly appeals to us. The curated opportunities to connect and network with impressive peers, who serve as a trusted support group offering both inspiration and guidance, are of immense importance.

LEY'COM asserts itself as the first green and social marketplace in North Africa, pioneering the digitalization of agri-food and sustainable projects. Our success is built on creating a vibrant community of sellers, supported by dedicated WhatsApp groups, attracting new members every day. Our competitive edge lies in a unique proposition: optimized product display across multiple sales channels through a single platform. This streamlined approach allows African sellers to centrally manage their activities, eliminating logistical and legal concerns. We offer an exclusive feature: easy access to other major international marketplaces with just a few clicks, promoting an omnichannel approach, a first on the African market.

We showcase a range of eco-friendly and authentic products, designed by committed creators, providing buyers with more than just a product but a unique story and authenticity. ILEY'COM also stands out as an impact-driven company, focusing on training and supporting social entrepreneurs and food producers. Our mission encompasses skills development, product promotion, and contributing to the growth of the local economy.

As we are directly implanted in the countries where we source our sellers from, we also dispose of a strong quality check and monitoring capacity for our products, which is a strong plus for the customer but also for us as a company because it guarantees the sustainable and socially positive nature of the products we allow our merchants to sell.

Acknowledging the fact that our target market, handicraft sellers and responsible producers in Africa, are today under equipped and ill-informed to perform well on the long run and most notably because of >span class="NormalTextRun SCXW17562835 BCX0"> low level of competitiveness, ILEY’COM intervenes to correct this issue and offers them sustainable growth opportunities.  

By supporting training programs and encouraging small SMEs to join the online market at a very low price (virtually none except time), ILEY’COM will help sellers to value their products and reach new markets. Moreover, the training provided and the onboarding process once a seller joins the marketplace will allow us to promote efficiently the characteristics of her/ his product and sell it for a relevant price, taking advantage from the quality and trustworthiness of our label and therefore benefiting from our network. By doing so, ILEY’COM improves these entrepreneurs’ value chain, capitalizing on previous experiences, such as Mashrou3i or Creative Tunisia that have identified a need for digitalization in the sector, and brings them new income sources. 

On the long run, and if our solution gains enough visibility, the whole community of sellers will benefit from our efforts, and this will profit to local communities, fostering job creation and more economic redistribution towards women and youth. Moreover, by installing a sustainable model for responsible producers, ILEY’COM encourages innovation within the crafts sector and the development of new enterprises, which will positively impact the economy. By supporting entrepreneurs in marginalized regions, such as the Tunisian South and interior, our marketplace is also a driver for reducing inequalities, basing its actions on previous initiatives and research (research papers by AFD or UNIDO most notably).   

By offering green entrepreneurs and food producers a chance to engage fully in their activity, and by facilitating their access to eco-friendly markets, ILEY'COM is supporting hundreds of existing or new business opportunities, stimulating demand for their products. This could lead to increased production and workforce growth, thereby contributing to local employment in communities. Furthermore, the implementation of free training programs enhances the skills of social entrepreneurs and responsible food producers, increasing their chances of success and fostering potential hirings in their communities. It also has a strong social impact on the professional insertion of women in economic circuits as we have mentioned. ILEY'COM also plays a key role in promoting economic and societal change in support of a positive environmental impact, as well as integrating sustainable development issues into entrepreneurship, with a particular emphasis on encouraging green entrepreneurship. 

In the coming years, our goal is to reach 2000 sellers on the platform and improve our visibility online, this by increasing our SEO capacity. We also wish to move to the next step and expand in different countries, such as Morocco or Senegal.  

In terms of social impact, we wish to keep our rate of at least 60% of woman sellers on the platform and would like to support job creation in the companies that profit from the marketplace. 

Some of our measure indicators: 

On the marketplace specifically: SEO score, evolution of sellers and buyers, conversion rate from visitor to buyer, seller retention rate, reviews and ratings, average processing time for an order, capacity to involve sellers from all horizons (not only urban but also rural for example) 

Training sessions + platform: number of hours of formation, number of new green entrepreneurs supported, number of new jobs created, number of women and youth supported, measuring positive environmental through waste reduction, use of recycled materials, % increase in buyer revenue after signing up to ILEY’COM. 

Our technology is in its consolidation phase, but the marketplace platform is already in service, and we receive orders every day. We are still improving our back-end space, and will try shortly to automate payments, deliveries and logistics management, which for the moment are still being done step by step. We also need to finish the development of our omnichannel solution.  

For the moment the cycle for the purchase and shipment of a product is straightforward and can be made in a few clicks for the client. We then intervene in the process to make sure the seller received the money (through an online payment app), and then direct the vendor for the delivery, or take care of it ourselves if we dispose of the product in our warehouse. 

We use WordPress technology, and we develop several applications integrated into the marketplace. We use AI to facilitate the experience of the vendor to create the eshop and add content. AI helps us to improve our SEO continuously 

Our solution is hosted in Mykinsta. We also use external delivery and payment partners integrated in our solution. 

10 person full time job 

We've been diligently working on refining and developing our solution for the past three years.

Aside from the diversity which is fostered in our team, as we have already mentioned, ILEY’COM supports the emancipation of women through their economic activities.  Most of the sellers on our platform are women (65%) and we specifically address the issues women face when trying to integrate economic circuits in Africa. 

Our training programs are designed to be gender-sensitive, acknowledging and addressing the specific challenges that women entrepreneurs may face. Our gender-balanced team ensures a diversity of perspectives in the decisions and directions of our project, promoting an inclusive approach. Moreover, the format of our trainings, that can be followed online, also addresses the challenge of mobility for women in Tunisia, and still allows them to build up their capacities and launch their projects. 

Moreover, our training program is specifically targeted towards disenfranchised communities that have little or no access to information about the opportunities and codes of online selling, and we do so to reduce the gap between urban and rural regions, which is particularly high in Tunisia but also in many other African countries.  

We generate turnover thanks to the commissions made on the products that are purchased on the marketplace and by proposing onboarding solutions to the vendors. Different tariff rates exist for a wide range of services, the monthly subscription cost varying from 10 to approximately 250 euros given the offer chosen by the seller. We therefore have two main sources of turnover, the customers of the marketplace and the sellers who purchase a subscription to the ILEY'COM platform. 

Our plan is based on increased communication to gain more and more users, which in turn will generate more turnover for the company. Regarding the numbers, we have a rather clear projection of what ILEY’COM could become and how large our market could grow. Our costs, in comparison with what we could receive from an important market extension, are relatively low, which is why we trust ILEY’COM to become sustainable very rapidly. 

For sellers, our total available market is estimated to be 1.6 billion dollars and our serviceable available market already represents around 600 million dollars. On the consumers side, the potential market for sustainable products is constantly growing in Africa but also on other continents, especially Europe and North America. Our product could interest a wide market of around 300M consumers if it grows enough, representing a TAM of 1 trillion dollars and a SAM of around 20 billion. 

For the moment, our monthly turnover is constantly progressing, and our growth rate is situated at around 85% every year. Last year, which was the first year where the project really took off, we generated 169 000 euros in turnover and hope to reach at least double this year. We target a turnover of around 9 million USD in 4 to 5 years.