Ryan Bacher

Position: Managing Director

Ryan Bacher was instrumental in starting up NetFlorist as a proof of concept in 1999. As managing director, he steered the fledgling company through the internet crash of 2001 and 2002. His savvy leadership resulted in NetFlorist’s success as a profitable e-tailer at a time when most other ecommerce companies were not able to do so. The company has grown to fulfil Bacher’s vision of NetFlorist becoming South Africa’s largest floral and gifting service on- and offline.

 

After obtaining a degree in law from Wits, Bacher worked for the Club Med group in the Caribbean, then returned to South Africa and joined NetActive Internet in 1997. NetFlorist was founded inside the NetActive Group in 1999.

 

Bacher considers himself fortunate to have been introduced to Ian Sturrock, who became his mentor during NetFlorist’s early years. When they met in 2000, Sturrock was financial director of Woolworths and proved to be an invaluable sounding board regarding issues relating to retail, finance and corporate governance.

 

Meeting customers’ various needs and making shopping on NetFlorist’s site a fantastic experience are what inspire Bacher to be an innovator in the world of e-commerce.  He has been at the forefront of innovations such as providing customers with an easy and time-efficient website to order flowers and gifts from and launching a real-time delivery notification system via email.

 

Running an online business in the African context has presented Bacher with two major challenges: limited Internet penetration and the delayed roll-out of broadband access. This means that he has to be smart about customer acquisition and realistic about the size of the market NetFlorist caters for.

 

Bacher believes, though, that the floral and gifting industry has an advantage over other online businesses. Since the industry was mostly telephonic prior to the Internet, clients were already accustomed to not being able to see and touch what they were ordering. Thus, he is of the opinion that the web actually enhances customers’ experiences with the company as can see what they are ordering.

In 2010, Bacher oversaw the division of NetFlorist’s two product categories – flowers and gifts – into two separate websites. As of November 2010, all of the company’s gifts were moved over to a new site, www.netgifts.co.za. The main reasons for this segmentation were to promote the company’s gifting products, of which there are over 400 different options, and to reduce the ambiguousity and confusion related to the fact that the name “NetFlorist” did not reveal that gifts are also available on the site.

 

Looking to the future of e-commerce, Bacher expects that the popularity using of mobile devices when buying online will rise as the use of computers falls. He bases this prediction on the fact that cell phone penetration, especially in Africa, dwarfs PC penetration and as a result, service providers will start to provide more and more offerings in a mobile context to penetrate the broader market.

 

Bacher finds great satisfaction in the idea that NetFlorist’s and NetGifts' sole purpose is to deliver emotions, using beautiful flowers and gifts as the conduit. He is passionate about NetFlorist’s function of enhancing relationships in an ‘instant’ world where care and attention to relationships have been replaced by text messages and TV games.