Member of the Month: Nathaniel Wade

Congratulations to our Member of the Month for October, co-founder of Wakuda, Nathaniel Wade.

Wakuda isn’t Nathaniel’s first foray into business. He started in a very different space – property management.

However, Nathaniel and his co-founder and childhood friend, Albert Larter, recognised a market gap when it came to accessibility and support for Black-owned businesses.

Nathaniel explains:

“Wakuda was born out of a personal need. Albert and I struggled to find products that represented us and our cultures in mainstream retail in the UK.

“We knew that there were business owners producing products and filling this gap, but trying to access them wasn't always the easiest. They weren’t selling online, weren’t very visible through their websites or were mainly selling through social media. The convenience and seamlessness of buying or accessing them wasn't the easiest.

“Albert’s background is in digital marketing, and I have a lot of online sales experience. So, we decided to put our skills together to launch Wakuda. We wanted to create more than just a marketplace, we wanted it to be a hub, a community where business owners, sellers and artisans could get together, share knowledge and collaborate.”

How did you meet your co-founder?

We went to school together, so we’ve known each other for 25 years. Albert initially came to me with the idea. It was something that we had been discussing for a while with regards to the lack of representation not only from the cultural aspect but also support for Black businesses in the UK.

This was at the height of George Floyd’s death and the worldwide protests. It was the catalyst for the change that was happening. We saw it as an opportunity to scratch our own backs, as well as solve the problem to get these businesses more visible and help our community.

What are the advantages of having a co-founder? 

Getting into a co-founder relationship won’t work for a lot of people. Having an established relationship prior to setting up the business is key. This isn’t our first project working together. We're quite transparent with each other. We understand each other well, each other's strengths and weaknesses.

The other good thing, apart from a diverse skill set, is just that support and ability to share what's going on in the business and having someone who's as engaged as you are.

Although you may have supporters of your business, whether it's family, friends or customers, they're not actually in it with you. So, having a co-founder is massively beneficial, especially in business, which is always up and down.

Was it challenging to start a tech business for two non-techies?

Regarding the technical aspects, we didn’t have the expertise in website development, especially with what we wanted required a lot of bespoke, custom elements.

My expertise lies in engineering and project management, so we outsourced a developer. However, it was important that we clearly define our requirements, even more essential than having the skill set to implement the work. That wasn't a massive hurdle to overcome. Obviously, there was an additional cost to outsource.

If we had the skill set to do it, but not necessarily the skills to know exactly what we needed and have a clear route to how we were going to do it, then that would have been more of a challenge.

Download our free guide for tips and advice to sell effectively on online marketplaces:

What were some of the challenges?

With a marketplace, you've got two sides to it – supply and demand, customers and buyers.

It is a cold start problem. You need to work out which side of the market you're going to fill. There's no point getting customers when there’s nothing to buy. We started with getting suppliers onto the platform, but then you’ve got no customers.

We had a two-pronged approach to start with. We used one side to drive the other. On the customer side, we looked at what product types or verticals customers were more interested in and we reached out to get more sellers based on that.

The other thing that worked in our favour was the fact that we launched during COVID. Over 90% of the sellers on our platform did a vast majority of their sales offline at local markets and pop-ups. During COVID and the lockdowns, they could no longer do that, which gave them the impetus to want to gain more visibility online. We used that as an opportunity to pitch Wakuda and they also had the capacity to be a part of the journey at that time.

What is the vetting process to list on Wakuda? 

We have an application process because we're very conscious about the customer experience, especially when buying online and from new brands and sellers who they may not have seen or experienced before.

One of the top criteria for us is exemplary product imagery. So, making sure that sellers have clear photos and product descriptions that reflect what they're selling. This was to ensure that people can trust what they're buying because that's important, especially when buying for the first time.

We have a few things around being e-commerce ready, as well as being able to fulfil orders within certain times. It does vary, depending on if the product is made-to-order versus having items ready.

Those are broadly what we use to gauge if we can work with someone. We also consider whether their products align well with our marketplace to ensure the best possible experience and success for both us and the seller.

We also use data analytics to see what categories customers are navigating to and what searches they are inputting into the search box. We are very data-driven in terms of what products we accept on the platform as well.

How is Wakuda bringing Black-owned brands into the mainstream and addressing the income gap? 

While selling online is huge, giants like Amazon and Shopify will sometimes lead you to believe that the vast majority of people are buying online. The fact of the matter is that the majority of sales taking place today are still offline. 

Wakuda is an online marketplace, but one of the things that we're ramping up is creating more in-real-life experiences for people to buy and for the sellers to showcase their brands and products.

We found it to be super effective. If it's something that you bought offline in a shop, you're going to be far more comfortable buying it online. You get to really experience the product, versus buying online for the first time and having a lot of questions about whether it's going to be right for you, whether you're even going to receive the product because you've never had an interaction with that brand or company before. We've found it to be massively beneficial to create different in-life experiences.

We recently had a pop-up, a retail showcase at Sky's HQ. Thousands of Sky employees had the opportunity to engage with the sellers in person and understand their businesses and stories. Stories are a massive part of the creation of a lot of these businesses. To add a layer to that, the employees also got the opportunity to go online and interact with these as well as a wider variety of businesses.

What’s next for Wakuda? 

We are continuing to build the community we have. We're not looking to go global as such, however, we already get orders from abroad organically. We don't market it outside the UK at all, but still get sales from there.

We also get sellers wanting to join us from the continent, as well as Africa and the Caribbean. We're taking our time with it, but that's definitely something we see as to how we are going to go global.

The other thing is the support we have for sellers selling offline. A lot of them sell offline once to a customer and that's it. We want to create an ecosystem that enables a customer to buy from that seller again, reengage with them but also discover more sellers and do all this seamlessly.

At the moment, sellers are primarily UK-based. We have select sellers from Nigeria, Ghana, Senegal and Saint Lucia, just in terms of managing logistics, but we're working on how we can blueprint it so that anyone can do it.

When did you first become aware of the Enterprise Nation platform?

I came across Enterprise Nation for the first time about two years ago. It was either through a Lunch and Learn or another type of webinar.

The support and resources available just for free have been very useful and insightful. It’s easy to become overwhelmed with the amount of different information, even if it is good content. I find Enterprise Nation is good at providing, not necessarily bite-size because it is quite a decent amount of information, but able to provide relevant information that can be immediately used in the business.

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