Kenyan leather retailer creates e-shop front.

Adelphi, The Leather Shop, was established in 1988 in Nairobi, Kenya and began exporting the same year. With three successful local retail outlets, the company's managing director, Nalina Rupani, thought the potential of the domestic market was saturated. This led her to create an electronic shop front to the world--with the help of an ITC e-trade consultant--which is helping her to expand markets internationally.

The firm designs and manufactures leather goods, such as folders, briefcases, handbags, travel bags and wallets. As in many small companies, only two of the firm's 11 employees use computers and have e-mail and Internet access.

Looking to e-trade for its growth, Adelphi worked with Andrew Otsieno, ITC's Kenyan consultant under the E-trade Bridge programme, to develop an electronic product catalogue, create a web site to market and sell its goods worldwide, and develop e-cards for its local marketing efforts.

The firm took a good look at its 200-plus product range and decided to segment the market according to client needs, it came up with four distinct segments: corporate gifts, conference bags, an Africana range and products for hotel use. The next step was to create a database to support marketing, including photographs of the products for sale online. Adelphi then registered the web site domain name and after careful searches, identified CCNow to supply its e-commerce platform.

The result has been savings in...