E-commerce industry grew 63 per cent in 2020, which inspired Fadi Antaki, founder of TFK website for online fashion and beauty, to fill in the gap in online fashion shopping for Egyptian consumers with more tech-enabled services.
EG: Why did you start and what is the passion behind it?
Fadi Antaki: On the personal level, I have a passion for both technology and fashion ad so I wanted to put them into unbeatable blend to empower local fashion brands to grow and become sustainable which, in turn, strengthen local companies which employ thousands of employees.
We saw a huge potential in the e-commerce market especially in the fashion and beauty category. Egyptian internet space is growing steadily as Egypt has 59.19 million internet users which constitute 57.3 per cent of the total population. Internet users grew by 8 per cent in 2021 versus 2020 in Egypt, which showed that the total addressable market is growing and healthy. About 57 per cent of the internet population purchased a product online before.
Also, the e-commerce budget in 2020 in fashion and beauty e-commerce space hit around LE12 billion accelerated by Covid-19 which led to 63 per cent growth in 2020 versus 2019.
Despite the growth in the fashion and beauty e-commerce space in Egypt, there were no strong and impactful online players specialised in this vertical only or serving affordable high quality fast fashion to all customer-segments in comparison with the world shopping experience.
We have a mission to fill this market gap by delivering an appealing and seamless online Fashion shopping experience to Egyptian customers to empower them to have access to diverse, curated, and affordable fast Fashion through our platform TFK.
EG: What is your background?
Fadi Antaki: My background is rooted in tech and fashion. On the fashion side, I represent the third generation of a family business in the fashion space. Also, I have more than 20 years of experience in tech. I’m currently the general partner of A15 Fund and founder and CEO of TFK. My experience in tech revolves around building, scaling, and exiting tech companies as I succeeded in conducting six exits crowned by MENA’s first dragon exit which is TPay exit to Helios Investment partners in 2018 and the Otlob exit to Rocket Internet in 2014. Also, I sit on the board of many prominent companies in the tech space serving as the chairman of Connect ads, ArpuPlus and LINK Datacenter (LDC) as well as a board member of Premium Card.
EG: What are the issues you are solving and what is your value proposition?
Fadi Antaki: TFK is aiming to disrupt the fashion industry by offering high quality fashion products at affordable prices in Egypt through the most seamless and appealing online shopping experience. Also, we are democratizing the fashion industry by empowering homegrown brands to grow and become sustainable.
On the customer side, we offer curated fashion to help customers in making their styling decisions by listing ready-made outfits they can shop from. Our fashion team selects items from brands and feature them in collections based on the latest fashion trends and social occasions.
Fashion curation at TFK is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) by recommending items customers can complete their look with.
Also, we provide world-class fashion photography powered by in-house studio to make the online shopping experience appealing and to make sure customers can relate to the items they browse. Moreover, we help customers in selecting the right size through virtual fitting room. We also have a strong in-house customer service team serving customers as well as free shipping, easy exchanges and returns and we a fast response delivery service.
On the Fashion brands side, we will help them boost their brand awareness and online reach as well as increase their sales in the most sustainable and scientific way through our marketing channels and know-how by ensuring they get the best returns versus other sales and distribution channels. Also, we help brands in their product and editorial photography and give operational and logistics support for instance; we invested in automating our backend using stateof- art software (ERP) to directly integrate with brands’ warehouses and shops to have instant order confirmation and inventory update.
EG: Tell us more about your users and business model.
Fadi Antaki: TFK is targeting young techsavvy Egyptian population who are interested in diverse Fashion collection and cutting-edge online shopping experience. Another very important segment that we have among our user-base is middle age professionals who are interested to shop affordable high-quality Fashion in a convenient way.
For our business model, we have two modes of operating. The first one is ‘Consignment’ through which we take a commission/cut from each item sold and we either have the stock at our warehouse or we work back-to-back with the brand. The second mode is ‘Retail’ through which we buy the items at wholesale price from brands. At TFK, we work with a mix of both modes depending on the brand’s demand, performance, and track of record.
EG: What are your main challenges?
Fadi Antaki: One of the main challenges that is not exclusive to TFK, but for all fashion e-commerce is returns. At TFK we are successful in achieving low returns compared to industry standards because we have a user-friendly returns policy. We offer a pleasant after-sale customer service.
We have introduced a virtual fitting room to make sure that sizes are correct. We also put on product videos so customers can fully visualise the fashion item. And we offer high-quality fashion products from well-trusted fashion brands to make sure products are not defective.
EG: What are your achievements and future plans?
Fadi Antaki: Since TFK started operations in September 2020, we successfully onboarded more than 90 brands, generating for those brands revenue in millions of EGP. Also, after 8 months of operations, we are happy to employ 35 talented, ambitious people, because creating meaningful and impactful jobs is our purpose.
On the customer side, we are conducting thousands of transactions on a monthly basis and have an active user-base of tens of thousands.
Also, we are proud of our talented team who were able to achieve very good and healthy growth rates month-over-month and quarter-over- quarter.
We will continue to scale our business and operations to the next level by serving the best fashion online shopping experience to customers.
EG: Do you think the ecosystem is helping you?
The players in entrepreneurial ecosystem in Egypt in general are very helpful. We have this sense of community and belonging.
