BUZZNETZ CEO, MR. SAIDU ABDULLAHI SHARES HIS VISION AND CHALLENGES ON BUZZNETZ WITH NAIRALANDERS
1. WHAT IS BUZZNETZ ALL ABOUT?
Buzznetz is an online entertainment media business and our main objective is taking the stress out of our customers entertainment needs. Have you ever wanted to watch a movie at home but gave up on the idea because you'd have to drive through a thick 2hr traffic? Have you ever thought of having the latest PS2 Game delivered to your doorstep or not having to pay late dues for that movie you rented 7 days ago but haven't had time to watch yet? If you have then you would appreciate Buzznetz's services, we deliver a range of entertainment media from dvds, games to audio books right to the doorstep of our customers. Our customers can keep the media for as long as they want without having to pay for late dues, they also get to enjoy free delivery. Buzznetz is about taking the stress out of entertainment!
2.WHAT NEEDS DOES BUZZNETZ SEEK TO SATISFY IN THE NIGERIAN MARKET?
Our focus is to satisfy the needs for convenience and value for money that our customers have through the provision of Customer-focused value-add services. We achieve this through our Internet front-office (
www.buzznetz.com) which is open 24 hrs/day with a huge online library that our customers can search and pick the media (dvd, audiobook or games) of their choice. Similarly, we know how hard our customers work for their money and the need to also manage that money properly, through our services which include free delivery and pickup, no payments for late returns, we are consistently adding value to our customers as our focus is on ensuring that they enjoy our entertainment media at their own pace without unnecessary pressure from us.
3. WHO ARE YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE?
Our target audience is anybody who appreciates the value of a good thing when they see one, be it a service or a product. We are working with and creating long lasting relationships with individuals who enjoy watching movies or listening to audio books or gaming. This audience includes children too who we are targeting through our soon to be introduced children educative series, it also includes both younger and older adults as our movies and inspirational and motivational audio books also appeals to these individuals. Finally we are also working on targeting educational institutions through our Educate Yourself Initiative (EYI) which will provide educational media materials to institutions at reasonable pricing.
4. WHY ARE YOU FOCUSING ON THE ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY CONSIDERING THE MANY CHALLENGES FACING NIGERIANS?
The challenges facing Nigerians are the same exact reason why we are focusing on the entertainment industry. Apart from the fact that Nigerians face all sorts of challenges on a daily basis and need to relax and take their shoes off, the entertainment industry is an ideal channel for educative, enlightenment and motivational content. At Buzznetz we believe that we can use entertainment media to promote closer family ties by encouraging people to enjoy quality time at home together, we believe that we can also motivate and encourage people to learn to deal with Challenges and see these as Opportunities through our motivational audiobook series. Successful people are always seeking for knowledge, so why waste your time in traffic, why not pop in a audiobook from Buzznetz and learn about the 7 Habits of Highly Effective people or learn a new language? So as you can see, entertainment is about peace of mind, its about relaxation, our hope is to use this
environment to help develop Nigeria through our service and product provisions.
5. WHAT PERSONAL EXPERIENCES PROMPT OR MOTIVATED YOU TO SET UP THIS ONLINE DVD RENTAL STORE?
I was driving home on a Friday late in 2004 and thought to myself, how I wish I had a movie to watch this weekend, I'd forgotten to pass by DVD Rental to pick movies, the drive back was not interesting so I thought to myself, "How i wish there was a company I could call or just visit their website so they can deliver to me at home, ", that was how Buzznetz was born, the rest is now history!
I have always wanted to show people that it was possible to build a business doing something you love and to show that businesses irrespective of their size can only succeed by focusing on delivering the very best service to their customers. I enjoy watching movies and listening to Audio books, I also love Lagos and have to come realize that life is all about perspective and how you look at things, problems or challenges or opportunities? So Lagos has a lot of traffic, people work long hours etc., these all pointed to the opportunity to provide a service which not only was convenient (delivery to your doorstep) but also not hard on the pocket (not late dues).
6. WHERE DO YOU SEE BUZZNETZ IN THE NEXT FIVE YEARS?
That is an interesting question, the future for entertainment generally in Nigeria is very bright and I see a lot of changes in people habits driven by improvement in technology as a medium for driving value creation within the industry and also better legislation to put the money in the hands of the right place, that of the artist and crew whose creative talent are raw materials for the industry.
We see ourselves pioneering and facilitating the above change. We hope to lead in the provision of technology driven services for the distribution and sale of entertainment media in the Rental Segment of the market not only in Nigeria but Africa. We hope to be more involved in helping shape the future of entertainment media rentals and distribution in Nigeria and to pioneer the use of the Internet as a medium for reaching out to the world. In five years, we also hope to have expanded our scope of operations to other parts of the country as well as increasing the number of distribution centers we currently have so as to improve on our promise to customers of less than 24hr delivery time.
7. HOW DO YOU HOPE TO COUNTER THE CHALLENGES OF PIRATED DVDS IN YOUR LINE OF BUSINESS?
For us as a business, our unique selling proposition is the offer the best in class media for our customers viewing, listening or gaming pleasure. We are constantly educating our customers and prospective clients on the difference between pirated and original media. Our customers are people who seek the best and who also know that Piracy violate people intellectual property rights. As a business, we maintain on the very best standards and our customers know and respect us for this, we are also working on different initiatives and partnerships with government and private institutions to see how our business can help drive the message that Piracy is bad. I believe the challenge of piracy can only be tackled through a combination of enlightenment campaigns, appropriate legislation from government working with the entertainment industry and finally a better economy which can provide the right enabling environment for people to get jobs and opportunities to
start SMEs amongst other things. All of these have to be done together and not in isolation for the fight against piracy to be worn.
8. SINCE YOU SAID BUZZNETZ IS A TOTALLY NEW CONCEPT IN NIGERIA, WHAT SPECIAL BENEFITS WILL YOUR SUBSCRIBERS ENJOY THAT IS PRESENTLY ABSENT IN THE INDUSTRY?
Our customers do not have to bother themselves with the logistics of either driving to and from our office or having to stand infront of the long rows of media before deciding what to pick because we take that away by doing free delivery and pickup! There is also the angle of environmental friendliness which is mostly not mentioned and that is the fact that we use a courier based service to deliver our titles thus preventing the burning of fuel and delivery of unfriendly gases into the atmosphere which is the case of a typical brick and motar models where all customers must come down themselves or send someone. Our clients will also enjoy the ease of being able to search through a huge online library or database of media, the fact that the whole thing is done electronically makes it fast and efficient as well as allows our business to also quickly provide the client with similar categories or what others who've picked a similar title chose. All these are
value-added services that do not exist with the current rental models available today.
We are also the first business that is saying to Nigerian that they can rent a title and keep it for as long as they want. Businesses in Nigeria need to focus on successful customer outcomes amongst which is that fact that customers don't want to have to pay huge sums because they couldn't return a movie the next day nor do they even want to have to return a movie they haven't watched! Our drive to first and foremost satisfy our customers is what sets both our customers and us apart from the pack.
Finally our collection is the best there is in the industry, our customers can pick from a varying range of categories of dvds, audio books and games, and we are constantly adding new titles. So our customers will never have a dull moment!
Thank your so much for this opportunity.
Kind Regards,
Saidu Abdullahi.
