At its annual Vodacom Business Partner Conference, held on 7 February 2017, Vodacom awarded Blue Cellular its Wholesaler of the Year Award for the second year running.
The event attracts national trade partners across all sales channels, including retailers (national chains), dealers, wholesalers, on billers, call centres and franchisees. A review on Vodacom’s performance and strategies for the New Year are key drivers to ensure all trade partners are aligned.
One of the most prestigious industry awards of the year, Blue Cellular won in a highly contested category. With distributors across the board experiencing almost no growth, Blue Cellular grew its footprint by close to 100%.
“We are proud and grateful on this meritorious achievement,” says Blue Cellular founder and CEO, Barry Taitz. “We will be aiming for the hat-trick in 2017, but know we will have to give 150% more effort”. He went on to describe the SA market as saturated, and that additional growth will mean outsmarting competitors on service, value and go to market strategy.
“Given the current economic climate, within our industry vertical and others, the effort required to retain one’s market share and keep existing customers will be intensified in 2017. To grow will be a luxury. We set ourselves three-digit growth percentage stretch targets last year, and are proud to say we got extremely close. The Blue Cellular team are quietly confident on another great year,” says Taitz.
Blue Cellular’s growth strategy includes targeting the SOHO/SME and corporate market sectors, educating consumers on brand and product, and building value propositions to meet customer needs. There is also a strong push towards outsourcing, increased automation, and specialist logistics.
Blue Cellular was established in 2003 and has grown to become the largest independent distributor of prepaid starter packs in South Africa’s rural and informal sectors.
The business has grown organically, leveraging its large, well-established national footprint, which includes a distributor network of more than 1 000 agents and resellers and a prepaid subscriber base of over 5-million.
Blue Cellular is also the only prepaid distributor that is operator agnostic, holding strategic agreements with all the major mobile network operators (MNO), namely Cell C, MTN, and Vodacom.
