Online buying is booming in South Africa at the moment. A year ago, bidorbuy (both online buying and bidding), Kalahari.com and Takealot.com were big names already, and Zando has since tried to join the upper tier in a fast-increasing market.

In fact, South Africa’s online spend leapt 30% from 2010 to 2011, climbing from R2bn to R2.6bn, with a further R9bn spent on airline tickets. This is in contrast to offline retail spend, which although is around R700bn, grew at under 10% annually.

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Loads of websites have begun to offer products and services in their online offering. Online sales have shot up overall, however due to so many more players, the spread may still not be enough to cover everyone's costs. With the larger participants having international-scale backing - bidorbuy and Takealot.com from Tiger Global, Kalahari.com from Naspers and Zando from Rocket Internet - they have a certain runway before things get tight.

So it would be prudent to ask, how are the smaller online businesses are seeing things. As it turns out, despite the increase in spend and competitors, the market for lesser-known ecommerce companies is doing well.

Take EasiOnline, for example, a strong up and coming ecommerce player, not as large yet as the big players. On interviewing them, one finds that as in the group buying industry, very few barriers to entry exist, except potentially money and time.

• Clients? Most suppliers are very reluctant to sign exclusivity and are happier supplying to anyone who can sell their wares.
• Traffic? A smaller online retailer can employ the same tactics that a larger competitor can, limited usually only by the amount of spend. However, online viral campaigns have proven that wrong time and again.
• Customers? Large players often lack flexibility and a customer-focussed approach, with most customers mentioning smaller websites when asked for their loyalty.
• Sales? With a much bigger workforce and more costs, bigger sites require a great deal more sales per employee to sustain themselves.

It is quite clear that over time, a well-managed, smaller ecommerce website will reach a similar size to that of the established online firms, provided that it can offer something unique on a continuous basis.

Whatever occurs over the next two years is critical - so watch this space!