WantItAll.co.za is an online shop based in Johannesburg, South Africa that sells over 14 million products. Founded in 2006 by Justin Drennan, Ryan Drennan and Terence Murphy, the company received venture capital and investment from respected South African entrepreneurs David Frankel (entrepreneur) and Ronnie Apteker. WantItAll has 16 employees and is ranked as the third largest web store in South Africa in terms of sales and the second largest in terms of visitors as per Alexa Internet rankings, with 200 000 customers and over 150 000 products shipped from the US to South Africa.
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International expansion
With the backing of angel investors, WantItAll.co.za has expanded into the Brazilian market with CompreUS.com, which translates to "Buy US" in Portuguese.
South African expansion
In April 2013, Wantitall invested in online design retailer Citymob.co.za, allowing Citymob to upscale and increase its product offering, as it will have a better distribution system. Subsequent to the investment, citymob was rebranded to superbalist.com
In November 2014 Wantitall launched an outsourced warehouse and logistics business parcelninja.co.za, which attracted R20M investment from C5 Holdings in the United Kingdom.
Walmart connection
WantItAll.co.za has been tasked to operate and manage the online shop for South Africa's largest cash and carry (sales) distributor Makro, called Makroshop.co.za. Makro in South Africa is part of Massmart which has just been acquired by the world's largest public corporation by revenue Walmart.
In 2014, Walmart partnered with wantitall.co.za to develop makro.co.za
Amazon blacklists South African Post Office
WantItAll formed a strategic partnership with Amazon.com to stock their entire product catalogue partly because Amazon "blacklisted" the South African Post Office for deliveries. This "blacklisting" was due to theft, inefficiency and lack of service commitment by the South African Post Office and meant that shipping products from the US via courier for individual South Africans would be prohibitively expensive.
By offering the entire Amazon.com product catalogue as a reseller, WantItAll allows the South African public to continue to buy products from Amazon.com in the United States and have them delivered to their door. WantItAll achieves this through consolidating orders within the US in order to reduce shipping costs to South Africa, while those shipments are then dispatched on a weekly basis via DHL courier. Customers also then have access to local support and consistent tracking of their deliveries.
Product catalogue
Although WantItAll maintains a solid partnership with Amazon.com and features approximately 14 million products in its database, the relationship with Amazon is not exclusive. WantItAll also stocks numerous other products and product categories sourced from other suppliers. This is to counteract issues experienced when there is no stock of a product available on Amazon.com.
The WantItAll product categories include books, CDs, DVDs, Blu-ray, software, consumer electronics, kitchen items, tools, gardening equipment, toys, gaming, baby products, apparel, sports equipment, jewelry, watches, health items, beauty products, musical instruments, clothing, and various other products.
Reviews
WantItAll pulls existing product reviews directly from Amazon.com and allows users to submit reviews to the web page of each product. Reviewers must rate the product on a rating scale from one to five stars. Customers can vote on reviews, indicating whether or not they found it helpful.