Over the past couple of months, times have been tough and things have been no different here at re:source. We have often questioned ourselves as to how businesses will keep the lights on and what will come out of these crazy times.

When the first hard lockdown started at midnight on 26 March 2020, realisation kicked in that many businesses would come to a halt. Just before the hard lockdown commenced, we launched a campaign to assist anyone who had a tech idea that could be helpful / useful / beneficial / constructive / valuable in this pandemic. After reviewing and discussing the ideas, we realised a few things:

• Many small to medium sized businesses did not have an online store
• A large number of those businesses did not know how to create an online presence or know where to start
• Current platforms like Shopify are too expensive and charge in dollars (with the current exchange rate, it can become very costly)
• South African's love supporting local

Thus began our journey in creating The Hoods - a marketplace platform for everybody and anybody to get online for free!

The Hoods has made the process of setting up an online store very simple and utilises Yoco (also a local South African favourite) as it's payment gateway for merchants to accept payments. As opposed to other platforms that take a percentage of your sale, The Hoods, at launch, will only take R1 per transaction.

If you have a business or know of a business that wants to create an online store or want to move a current online store to The Hoods, please head on over to The Hoods and the team will gladly assist you.