It is pretty much conventional wisdom now that the next big, untapped market for web entrepreneurs in the Middle East is online retailing and e-commerce, and in the last few months we have
seen a flurry of activity in this space
.
The region still has nothing worthy of being mentioned in the same sentence as Amazon or Netflix.
But this comparison review of four of the UAE's best online fashion stores
shows that the game is getting better by the day.
The National's Sophia Money-Coutts tests our four digital boutiques:
,
(no relation to the bricks-and-mortar Villa Moda),
and
. At each, she places an order, testing the site itself, its payments systems, delivery process and returns policy. The results show that it is possible to get something close to a US/European style online shopping experience right here in the UAE.
Most impressively, Boutique 1 offer four-hour delivery (for a fee of Dh100-200), meaning you can make an order at lunchtime and find the product waiting for you when you get home. This needs to become standard across the industry, especially in a country where anywhere is a four hour drive from anywhere else. Do that with DVDs, gourmet food, video game rentals or a million other things, and you will print money, especially in the UAE, home to a whole bunch of people on the internet all day with heavily consumerist tendencies and itchy credit card fingers.
