Hocine Sahnoun: Canadian Merketplace With the Tools That the Biggest Platformes in the Ecommerce Industry Have, Such as Amazon and Alibaba

We are a new Canadian B2B and B2C Marketplace. We set out a challenge to build and launch a new Canadian Marketplace with the tools that the biggest platforms in the Ecommerce industry have, such as Amazon and Alibaba.

Our mission is to give Canadian business more priority to sell online and search global markets at a very affordable costs with hassle free.

We are a marketplace selling everything on B2C just like amazon and on B2B just like Alibaba. Currently we only allow Canadian businesses to open a free account because we can check and validate the vendors; and we are investing a lot in digital marketing to reach globe customers.

Tell us about yourself?

I am an IT professional and have been in the industry for more than 20 Years occupying different jobs and functions.

Five years ago, I started a small company designing websites for small businesses, and providing social media and E-commerce training for some partners such as different business Networks around Montreal and Laval.

So, I was doing a lot of reading mainly about internet usage by Canadians, and that’s how I found out that more than 80% of Canadians conduct their online shopping on foreign platforms, and spend billions of dollars on these platforms; the main eCommerce platforms are Americans and Chinese.

If you could go back in time a year or two, what piece of advice would you give yourself?

I would have invested more money and more time in this business.

What problem does your business solve?

Many Canadian businesses have to pay a substantial amount of money and rely on these foreign platforms to reach global markets.

Inasbay is a very affordable Marketplace which is the best choice for all Canadine businesses of all sizes. In 2021, retail e-commerce of physical goods generated almost 53.77 billion U.S. dollars in revenue and was forecasted to increase to over 90 billion U.S. dollars by 2025, we are here as an alternative choice to these big platforms.

What is the inspiration behind your business?

I came across in my life a very successful businessman in Algeria, his name is Issad Rebrab. He said one thing which stayed in my ever since I heard it; he said: Start small, see big and go fast.

Starting small is very simple to understand, self-ownership, no employee, low budget…etc… but seeing big and going fast is more complicated than that.

How big can you see, to measure to what and in what dimension, so the easiest way was to see big as the biggest there is out there and the biggest are Amazon and Alibaba, I want Inasbay to be as big as Amazon and as big as Alibaba.

Now going fast to reach that requires effort, time and a lot of money. I am working on all that.

What is your magic sauce?

The audacity to compete against the biggest, persistence and determination to make Inasbay a successful story.

What is the plan for the next 5 years? What do you want to achieve?

We are working to reach a sustainable business and profitable within the next two years, then look for investors to boost Inasbay to go global with a multiple currency marketplace within the next 5 years.

What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced so far?

There are three main challenges. The first is technical. Having a marketplace solution will all the necessary tools of a modern E-commerce platform is very challenging.

The second is legal; with regards to compliance issues, having a multivendor platform requires a lot of compliance to legal and trade treaties and laws.

The third and biggest challenge is to solve the formula of which first the chicken or the egg…in other words how to get customers to the marketplace while there are no products (sellers), and how to get sellers to the marketplace while there are no customers.

We worked a very smart and ambitious marketing strategy to overcome all these challenges within the next two years.

How do people get involved/buy into your vision?

I am looking for local businesses to start with, businesses I can talk to, as well as the current Canadian vendors, retailers and wholesalers who sell on Amazon and Alibaba.

I want to talk to them about a number of keys differentiators between us and the other marketplaces, and how advantageous they can be to their business and their online experience.

Fort instance Inasbay does not hold customers credit card details, so you have to enter them for each transaction.

We do not do any invoicing on behalf of our vendors, the platform splits the money between our commission and the vendor’s money immediately as soon as a customer makes a payment, unlike amazon or Alibaba, they pay their sellers once a month, so they use their money to earn interest with the banks first, then pay them.