The man who accidentally built a South African e-commerce giant

Ryan Bacher co-founded the online flower and gifting service NetFlorist with partners Lawrence Brick and Jonathan Hackner on Valentine’s Day in 1999.

Speaking at a Startup Grind event in Johannesburg in February 2015, Bacher said they were asked to develop an online platform for Massmart-owned retailer Makro but accidentally stumbled upon a successful formula in the form of NetFlorist.

“They wanted to put Makro online. They wanted Makro to have an e-commerce business,” he said.

“We said to them: We’ll build an e-commerce site. We don’t care what it is. We’ll build it and run it for a few weeks just to understand how this thing works, and then we’ll build Makro.co.za.”

Bacher explained that the Massmart team, which sat on the board of his team’s Internet service provider, wasn’t confident in their ability to develop an e-commerce platform.

“Because they were invested in our business and sat on our board, they said to us: you guys are an Internet company. Put Makro online,” he explained.

“They also said: We know that you know squat about that because we sit on your board. You guys give Internet connectivity, but you don’t know anything about e-commerce.”

Undeterred, the team found a florist in Sandton, and they agreed to sell flowers online, which the florist would then deliver to the customer.

Having provided Internet connectivity services in South Africa, the team had an extensive list of email addresses to which they sent Valentine’s Day emails promoting the service.

“Something amazing happened. We got R30,000 worth of business from emails we sent out on Valentine’s Day — more than your average florist did in a month,” said Bacher.

He explained that this was a major revelation for him and his partners, and as a result, they rejected Makro’s request for them to build its e-commerce platform and went all-in on NetFlorist.

From a law degree to one of South Africa’s oldest online stores

Bacher’s career path shifted several times, having studied and completed a Bachelor of Arts and Law degree at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1994.

Following his studies, Bacher worked for the Club Med Group in the Caribbean before returning to South Africa and joining NetActive Internet, which launched his two years of experience in the Internet industry.

Around this time, the Massmart Group approached Bacher and his team to build an e-commerce platform for Makro.

According to Bacher, who has served as NetFlorist’s managing director since its inception, the retailer is arguably the oldest South African e-commerce platform still in operation.

While Kalahari.net was older, the Naspers-owned online retailer merged with Takealot in 2015. Naspers elected to retire the Kalahari brand and keep Takealot.

NetFlorist has seen significant improvements under Bacher’s leadership. As it matured, the company transitioned from an Internet start-up to a full-blown retailer, requiring the team to key aspects of retail.

“Retail is about the product that you sell. The technology is not all that important,” said Bacher.

“Selling the product online is only one part of the journey. The logistics of delivery are difficult and you can very easily become over-reliant on suppliers.”

At the same time, Bacher emphasised the importance of innovation and customer satisfaction, noting that success should be measured by sales and customer and employee satisfaction.

He said that nowadays, almost all successful e-commerce retailers in the country have their own warehouses to control distribution.

Most of NetFlorist’s flowers are now procured domestically, and the company has expanded its catalogue beyond just plants to include gifts, confectionary, bakery products, and alcohol.

“The company now sources 70% of its flowers in South Africa and the other 30% from the rest of Africa,” said NetFlorist.

Bacher recently moved to Melbourne, Australia, where he continues to serve as NetFlorist managing director.

He is also a member of the South African chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organisation.