Descubrimos: Donde comparas precios en todas las tiendas
Descubrimos es el unico sitio de latinoamerica donde se pueden encontrar productos mas baratos en tiendas y subastas
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Descubrimos.com en Dow Jones Newswires
By Shane Romig
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
BUENOS AIRES (Dow Jones)--Latin American online shopping has long faced hurdles to growth not seen in the U.S.: faulty mail services, limited Internet access and region-wide fear of fraud and credit risks. But early on in the e-commerce boom nine years ago, an Argentine startup called Mercadolibre Inc. (MELI) sought to turn these limitations into an advantage. The result was a distinctly Latin American version of EBay (EBAY), where purchases that start online are concluded offline, with direct vender-to-customer communication, personalized delivery and the physical transfer of cash. Now, after outfoxing the giant U.S. site on which it is partly modeled, NASDAQ-listed Mercadolibre has completed a takeover of competitor DeRemate.com and cemented its dominant position in the region. That leaves it poised to exploit a shift in Latin American shopping habits, with millions starting to see their computers as shopping tools for the first time. "We're expecting (Latin American) e-commerce to grow by 30% to 50% per year, with the company's volume matching that trend," company founder and President Marcos Galperin said in an interview shortly after his company's takeover of DeRemate's Argentine and Chile operations. Others' projections back up these forecasts. Guillermo Rospigliosi, vice president of Visa's e-commerce department in Latin America and the Caribbean, says online consumer sales in the region hit $11 billion in 2007 and are expected to reach $16 billion this year and $30 billion by 2010. One driver behind the trend is an expansion in access. Internet penetration has increased from just 2% since his company's beginnings to about 22% now, said MercadoLibre's Galperin. Within five to 10 years, half of the population is expected to have access, he added. "Even in the slums there are telecommunication locales that provide Internet access," said Pablo Bertorello, President of online shopping site descubrimos.com. This is spurring rapid online growth in tourism, training, grocery sales, and entertainment, noted Marcos Puerreydon, president of Argentina's electronic trade chamber, or CACE. Yet Puerreydon added that "building confidence remains the principal challenge...(online shopping) is new and scares people due to the lack of understanding and use." Latin American customers and sellers have resorted to inefficient solutions to get around the trust issue, using local, private delivery services or meeting in public places to seal the deal. "It's a little hard to trust a system when the most common delivery method is a guy in a helmet knocking on your door to turn over the goods and collect payment," said discubrimos.com's Bertorello. "It's a weird experience, far from what it should be, but successful enough." Still, confidence is growing. In recent surveys, 60% of consumers saw Internet buying as safe, up from 40% in 2006, said Visa's Rospigliosi. This likely has more to do with online sites' own scam-busting initiatives than with any changes to the region's flawed delivery or financial systems or to its cash culture. Here, Mercadolibre was a trailblazer. Like EBay it employs a reputation system designed to separate the legitimate traders from the grifters, which has kept fraud levels low and engendered trust. "People said we were crazy, and we said great, less competition," said Galperin. Paradoxically, economic crises such as the one that hit the company's home market of Argentina in 2001 and 2002, have helped it. The newly launched site became a vehicle for desperate individuals to raise badly needed cash. The crisis "encouraged people to try it out," Galperin said. Befitting of these humble beginnings as a kind of virtual flea market, the site has maintained a rough edge with an apparently loose ad space policy. Users who responded to a recent banner ad's invitation in English to click on its "fart button" were directed to a site promising a free plasma TV in return for providing an email address, filling in a survey and making a number of purchases. This has not deterred users. An estimated 27.5 million separate users visited MercadoLibre in April, a figure that Visa says puts it ahead of all other Latin American sites after Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! Meanwhile, as the site's listings have shifted from being predominantly used items auctioned by individuals to new fixed-price offerings from online stores, sales volume and collected fees. Net revenue totaled $28 million in 2005, $52 million in 2006 and $85 million in 2007. Now the company hopes to steer a larger share of the sales flow through its own online payments system, MercadoPago, which it has amended to expedite the settlement process. While most transactions are still in cash, some 13% are now done through online payments, and that number is growing. As it has grown, Mercadolibre has retained its independence - also in defiance of skeptics. The company originally had a non-competition agreement with EBay, as a condition to the 18% stake it held in the Argentine firm. When this expired in 2006 fears arose that the U.S. giant would attack the regional market. But Mercadolibre has retained its independence, partly because its ad hoc Latin American business model is unfamiliar to the more streamlined EBay, but also because of its aggressive acquisition of DeRemate. In purchasing that site's Argentine and Chilean operations for $40 million deal last month, Mercadolibre finalized a takeover of its operations across Latin America that began in 2005 and thus kept its only real competitor out of EBay's reach. The deal means that MercadoLibre now controls 90% to 95% of the market, Bertorello said.
-By Shane Romig, Dow Jones Newswires; 54-11-4590-2438; shane.romig@dowjones.com -
Descubrimos.com: donde comparas precios
La clave para realizar una buena compra es encontrar el producto deseado al mejor precio. Con este propósito lanza Descubrimos.com, el único sitio en Internet en el que se pueden encontrar productos a la venta en todas las tiendas y subastas--inclusive de todas las marcas y categorías.
Descubrimos.com orienta al consumidor en la búsqueda del artículo que necesita, mediante diferentes herramientas. En el sitio, los usuarios pueden navegar por más de 400.000 artículos y compararlos entre sí hasta hallar el ideal. De cada producto se ofrece un detalle con el precio y las principales características, junto a las tiendas donde adquirirlo. Descubrimos.com no es un servicio de compra-venta.
Descubrimos.com es publicado por Descubrimos Inc., la compañía de alta tecnologías norteamericana, con sede en Palo Alto y equipo de desarrollo en Argentina.
