CTalkBuyMe CEO: “88% of Israelis would rather buy a gift using a digital platform”
CTalk
BuyMe CEO: “88% of Israelis would rather buy a gift using a digital platform”
Tomer Cohen, CEO of BUYME, spoke to CTech about the state of the Israeli e-commerce sector
Tomer Cohen
(Sinai David)
“BuyMe is Israel's leading digital gift card platform. Basically we invented the industry here in Israel about 10 years ago,” BuyMe CEO Tomer Cohen told CTech at Calcalist's e-commerce conference this week. “We are the only B2C company that deals with gift cards that has a very sophisticated app, where you can actually keep all your gifts in one place and make sure they don't go to waste. We have more than 900,000 Israelis using our app to buy gifts.”
Founded in 2012, BUYME is a digital platform that enables any retailer, merchant or service provider, to offer gift cards to consumers and to companies using the platform. It also allows companies to provide gift cards to employees.
“We finished a very big survey with more than 10,000 Israelis. And what we've discovered is that 88% of Israelis would rather buy a gift for someone else using a digital platform. The reason is that they don't want to waste time going to the mall in order to buy a gift.” Cohen says that any e-commerce company should include gifting in their business strategy. “It has the ability to enhance your income by 3-7%. For an e-commerce company, that's pretty big.”
Regarding the impact of the global economic downturn on BuyMe, Cohen said that they are less impacted than other companies. “I think e-commerce in general, like any other sector, is hurting because of the economic crisis. Definitely. However, in the gifting industry, we see almost zero impact from the economic crisis. And I think the reason is that from one end, gifting is not a major part of the [expenses] of any household, and the negative impact of not giving someone a gift when they have a birthday or providing them with a cheaper gift can be very meaningful. So those two trends together create a situation where the gifting industry is, I wouldn't say immune, but [less] sensitive to the economic crisis.”
You can watch the full interview in the video above.
