“When you are small, don’t rely on your strength, rely on your creativity.”
This week, we will be taking a trip into the world of Faaji Hub, checking out how the event vendors’ listing platform is looking to take over the world.
There exists a need for party planners who want to have access to a wide range of vendors from a single platform. It might interest you to know that Faaji Hub started out as a restaurant listing platform before pivoting into event vendors’ directory. The initial idea that Faaji Hub would have delivered is a site where you could reserve yourself a table at your favourite restaurant ahead of when you will need it, but of course the African market isn’t ripe for such.
Launched at the WED Expo 2014, the platform now boasts of over 700 vendors of all kinds.
The problem
The need for Faaji Hub was identified early 2013 when a cousin of Olaotan Oladitan, who’s one the founders, was coming in from the United Kingdom for her wedding. It was a challenge for her finding the people needed to make the event a success.
In a bid to address a reoccurrence of the cousin’s challenge in hosting event, the idea for a directory for event vendors and venues was conceived.
Solution
“It’s not about having everyone on the platform, but having the necessary ones that would give every user a wide range of options to choose from.”
Faaji Hub offers users a wide range of options to choose from. Vendors get the necessary exposure which could translate to more revenue. Event organizers can also put up their events on the platform.
The platform is free for users to search for vendors. However for vendors, getting listed is based on subscription. Users search results are tailored to their locations, eliminating the case of a Nigerian user seeing listings from another country. That implies that my search result as a user from Nigeria would be different from another user who is searching the directory from the United Kingdom.
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The basic package is free for vendors but it of course has limited features compared to the premium packages.
Competitive Advantage
“Having competitors is good as it encourages you to keep innovating.”
For Faaji Hub whose major source of finance has been bootstrapping, it’s all about evolving to always satisfying the end users while also keeping in mind the need to help vendors maximize their exposure.
“We promise the event vendors and venues exposure and tell them that it’s what they do with it that matters and pays off. So they have a role to play too, by putting up quality content on their page, that would encourage the users to check them out and patronize them”
Vendors on the directory are also gets recommendations on tactics they could adopt to make effective use of the promised exposure, towards generating more revenue.
Olaotan attributes the growth in the number of both vendors and users on the platform to recommendations via word of mouth.
Major Challenge
“The fact that there are so many problems is what makes it interesting, that means there are so many opportunities.”
To Faaji Hub, the rate of internet penetration is a limiting factor.
“We launched March 2014 and within a month, we saw a couple of clones.”
Future
The short term goal for the event vendors’ directory is to have more event vendors and venues on board which informs its ongoing promo on one of its premium packages to help businesses get listed. Another item on the list of short term goals is to fully capture the Nigerian market.
Talk about the long term goal, it’s being an event vendor directory to reckon with on a global scale.
