The re-commerce platform Soum has announced that it has managed to raise $18 million to expand its operations in the Middle East and North Africa.

The mentioned company was founded in 2021 in Saudi Arabia. The firm currently intends to expand its business to other parts of the Middle East and North Africa. The company will begin initially to implement the relevant plans in the United Arab Emirates.

Expanding the geography of the firm’s activities is not the only e-commerce platform plan for the near future. The company also intends to expand the categories of services in which it operates. The firm will offer new products. Currently, most of the company’s offerings are related to electronics.

The co-founder of Soum, Fahad Al Hassan, says that the firm scales in different geographical areas and considers the entire region of the Middle East and North Africa in this context. He also stated that the company has started testing new categories to materialize its vision of a place where products from all groups can be sold. Separately, Fahad Al Hassan says that the firm aims to make the process of buying and selling goods easier and more accessible for everyone.

He says that currently, the delivery of most goods takes from three to four days. Users have the opportunity to initiate a return within 24 hours if the product specifications do not meet their requirements. The company plans to extend the return period to a week or even a month in some cases.

Soum earns income through fees for each item sold. The fee depends on several factors, including supply and demand. The fee is from 10% to 20% of the cost of the product. The best-selling products on the Soum platform are laptops and iPhone smartphones.

The financing round was led by the Jahez Group, based in Saudi Arabia, and is part of the Jahez ownership structure.

Abdulaziz Alhouti, Director of Investments at Jahez Group, during a conversation with media representatives, said that as progress is being made in the digital age, there is a need in the framework of commercial operations to have offers that are characterized by a high level of accessibility, reliability, sustainability and do not involve friction. According to him, Soum is working in this direction.

Currently, in the United States, many companies that operate in the sphere, of retail, are diversifying their business. This strategy is because there is a steady downward trend in consumer spending. This was reported by the media last month. For example, The RealReal has started an overhaul. The company expects that these actions will allow it to benefit in the first half of next year. The firm changed the commission structure, began to review the dynamic of deliveries, and introduced third-party advertising.

Fashionphile, a virtual luxury resale platform based in San Diego that specializes in preowned ultra-luxury accessories. This company, as part of the transformation, the need for which is due to changes in consumer behavior, begins to engage in wholesale trade in the B2B format after the purchase of the Canadian omnichannel luxury goods retailer LXRandCo. eBay is also currently stepping up in the sphere of resale of luxury goods. This means increased competition.

As we have reported earlier, Salv Raises $4.3 Million.