- ₦250,000+spent by one first-time buyer who found Hingees through ChatGPT
The order
Hingees sells leather goods and clothing. First-time buyers usually start small, with a shirt or maybe a notebook. So when a new customer ordered over ₦250,000 of leather goods, it looked like it might be fraud. Someone from the team called to check.
The order was real. The customer explained she had not found Hingees through Instagram ads, Google search or a friend. She had asked ChatGPT for Nigerian leather brands, and Hingees showed up.
“I always thought large orders came from returning customers or ads, and they still do. I just never imagined a chatbot would also be bringing us customers.”
The groundwork behind it
Founder Hammed Okunade says Hingees is obsessed with tidy product details, tagged photos and smart keywords. It did that work for years to show up in Google. TechCabal's point is that AI now helps shoppers look, compare and decide in one chat. That earlier work is what AI can read.
The article says a small brand with good product details and photos can show up next to big brands without paying for ads. Sellers who only use Instagram or WhatsApp may be invisible to AI tools.
What other stores can take from this
- Clean product details keep paying off. Okunade spent years on tidy product details, tagged photos and keywords. TechCabal says that's the kind of information AI tools can read.
- Small brands can appear next to big ones. TechCabal says good product details and photos can get a small store picked without paying for ads.
- Find out how new buyers found you. Hingees only found out about ChatGPT because the customer said so on the phone call.
Worth knowing: This is a single order. It shows what can happen, not what usually happens.
Source
“Small businesses spent years optimising for Google. ChatGPT turned that into sales”
Read the original article (opens in a new tab)Hingees is not a FirstPicked customer. This page is our summary of TechCabal's reporting. The figures and quotes are theirs.
