E-commerce Titans: Meet the duo behind Bash and Superbalist

Their latest project, Bash has had over 500,000 customers since its launch and shot up to the number one spot in the Apple App Store for all categories and has been ranked second in the Google Play Store's shopping category.

Claude Hanan and Luke Jedeikin are behind Bash and Superbalist. Source: Supplied.

The TFG site, which officially launched in February now offers over 40,000 products from more than 300 top brands.

User experience

But because they launched the app in beta mode – meaning it is new and experimental - a lot of user experience issues have arisen which they face with gusto.

“We address this feedback with obsession and our app rankings have been improving by 50% or more each month. We launched in “beta”, and knew full well that the product was not perfect, but was sufficiently advanced to get it into the hands of our customers and get real-life feedback.

"E-commerce is highly operational, with many touchpoints, and one naturally has to prioritise the backlog of customer pain points, and fix them over time in priority of highest to lowest impact.

TFG launches Bash online shopping platform

22 Feb 2023

“In spite of a number of papercuts, we have seen material increases in conversion rate and average basket size, two really important metrics we watched closely post-launch. Said another way, compared to the previous websites and apps, when someone lands on the platforms they are not only more likely to purchase but they are more likely to spend more than previously too,” says Jedeikin.

Hanan adds:

This will be a journey though, we know we’re not yet where we need to be and are confident we will get to world-class level relatively quickly from here.

Balancing pillars

Other challenges include carefully balancing different pillars that make e-commerce successful.

“Omni channel retail sits at the intersection of traditional retail (assortment planning and product procurement), logistics (the build, design and maintenance of a fulfillment network that can deliver parcels quickly and cheaply) and software development (creating and maintaining all the tangential digital applications that support the operation including; consumer shopping platforms, payments and logistics).

Each of these pillars are industries in themselves, and mastering the combination that balances customer and business value, profitability, is a fascinating challenge,” says Jeidekin.

TFG beta launches Bash platform - 200 brands, 1 destination

Lauren Hartzenberg  27 Jul 2022

According to the co-founders, app sales surged to over 35% of total online sales within the first two months. Furthermore, the app's conversion rate exceeded mobile web by ±200% and desktop by over 80%.

Persistance

The duo who learned a lot from building Superbalist, say persistence is the only way to build a quality product.

“What we learned from building Superbalist is persistence. E-commerce is hard. Finding top tech talent is hard. Building great products is hard. Creating remarkable customer experiences is hard. And it’s hard in the way solving a puzzle is hard, and hard in the way running a marathon is hard. You have to do both, and you need 200 highly motivated, dedicated team-mates doing both with you, every day, for at least five years,” says Hanan.

Friendship

The two have been friends since they were children and their friendship easily adapted to being business partners.

“We have known each other since we were children - schooled and matriculated together. We have always shared similar circles of friends, but have managed to keep distinct enough circles of friends too, allowing our professional relationship to thrive.

"Back in 2010, I was in marketing strategy and Claude was in finance when we decided to pursue an opportunity of joining the group buying frenzy at the time - and launched Citymob. This then rebranded into Superbalist in 2013, and sold to Takealot group in 2014, and we stayed as co-ceo’s of Superbalist and served on the Takealot executive until our resignations in 2020,” says Jedeikin.

The highlights for them include successfully aggregating TFG’s brands and they have big plans on bringing their technology into brick and mortar stores.

Hanan adds: “Our initial hypothesis was regarding the power of aggregation. TFG is a federated business comprising many brands with separate stores, their online strategy mirrored this via numerous separate brand websites. We felt that aggregating everything into a single app would be a very competitive consumer proposition whilst being more cost effective and the initial results have validated this approach. Our next frontier will be the power of bringing this technology into stores to enable our staff to have selling and service superpowers."