Own a piece of the bridge from African and African-descent makers to America's doorstep
Afrikart is building the commerce infrastructure that brings products from African and African-descent makers, and other brands our community loves, to U.S. customers — curated, stocked in America, delivered in days, and served properly. We invite investors who think in years, not quarters, to build it with us.
From a maker's hands to an American doorstep
Why Afrikart exists
A billion people make extraordinary things — Ethiopian coffee, Moroccan argan, Turkish ceramics, Ghanaian shea, handwoven baskets and hand-hammered jewelry. And the world's largest consumer market can barely buy any of it. Not because demand is missing, but because everything between the maker and the doorstep is broken: distribution, customs, content, delivery, service.
Our mission is to run that broken middle — so makers only have to make, and customers only have to click buy.
Infrastructure first. On purpose.
We spent our early capital building the machine before pouring fuel into it. Today the full chain is live and processing real orders, end to end.
U.S. fulfillment
Our Oregon warehouse receives, quality-checks and ships every product — days to the doorstep instead of weeks from abroad, via UPS, FedEx and USPS.
Vendor network
140+ qualified relationships from Lagos to Addis to Marrakech to Istanbul — recruited, vetted and managed by our Vendor Relations team, largely on capital-efficient consignment terms.
Our own software
The marketplace plus seven operating portals — vendor, sales, customer care, finance, employee, careers and hiring — built in-house. No per-seat SaaS bills; every workflow is ours to automate.
The Brain — our AI layer
Studies browsing, search, cart and purchase behaviour across the site; powers out-of-stock replacements, cart complements and recommendations — and feeds demand data back into sourcing.
Commerce stack
Stripe and PayPal payments, guest checkout, customer accounts, order tracking, purchase history and a 30-day returns process — the trust layer American shoppers expect.
A team on both continents
Four departments — Vendor Relations, Product Listing, Customer Care, Developers — distributed across Africa and the U.S., with our own accountability software keeping remote work measurable.
Large markets, underserved buyers
Every category we curate sits inside a large, growing U.S. market — and in several of them, the gap between what buyers want and what they can find is documented.
| Category | The U.S. market | Our angle |
|---|---|---|
| Coffee & tea | U.S. coffee ~$101B; specialty is its fastest-growing segment (~9.5%/yr) | Nearly half of U.S. adults now drink specialty coffee daily — and single-origin African coffee is the story they're buying |
| Food & spices | Specialty food & beverage $207B; N. American spices ~$7–8B | Global and ethnic flavors are the category's main growth driver; online is its fastest-growing channel |
| Beauty & haircare | Black consumers alone spent $9.4B on beauty in 2023 | Black-owned brands earn just 2.5% of beauty revenue while Black shoppers are 3× more likely to be dissatisfied with their options — a documented supply gap we source directly into |
| Gifting | U.S. corporate gifting ~$312B | Companies are trading throwaway swag for gifts with story and social impact — exactly what we curate |
| Jewelry, leather, fashion, home, fragrance | Large mass markets | We compete on craft and origin, not volume |
The most motivated buyers are concentrated and reachable: 2.8M African-born Americans, 3.5M identifying as Middle Eastern or North African, 48.4M Black Americans — before counting the far larger group who buy for taste, craft and story alone. Sources: Ken Research, Grand View Research, Specialty Food Association, NielsenIQ, McKinsey, Coresight Research, Migration Policy Institute, U.S. Census Bureau.
Simple economics, measured daily
We earn a commission on every sale through the marketplace. These are our operating numbers today — measured, not projected. Here's where a typical $65 order goes:
Why it works
- Customers currently cost $15–25 to acquire on Google Ads and spend $65 per order — an order can pay for its own acquisition
- Vendors cover card fees and happily share 50%: we are their entire U.S. operation, and we bring the customers
- Food, coffee and beauty run out — repeat orders arrive with no new ad spend
- Consignment supply lets us test demand before buying deep inventory
Where it compounds
- Bundles, gift sets and B2B gifting raise basket sizes against a fixed shipping cost
- Every vendor onboarded deepens a catalog competitors can't copy from a desk
- The Brain turns every order into sourcing intelligence
- AI automation keeps cutting the cost of adding each vendor and SKU
"Why won't Amazon just crush you?"
Because Amazon is a shelf — built for sellers who already have U.S. inventory, compliance, polished content and ad budgets. Our vendors have none of that. Building it for them is the business, and it's the part nobody else wants to do.
| Amazon | Etsy | Afrikart | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Built for | Sellers with U.S. stock & ad budgets | Makers shipping one parcel at a time | Makers with great products and no U.S. operation |
| Delivery | Fast — if the seller pays for FBA | Often 2–5 weeks from abroad | Days, from our Oregon warehouse |
| Authenticity | Counterfeits common | Unverified | Qualified vendors; every product checked by our team |
| Discovery | A search engine | Browsable, not curated | Curated by region, story and category; AI recommendations |
| Vendor pays | Referral + fulfillment + storage + ads | Listing + transaction + payment + ads | One commission. Everything included. |
How investing in Afrikart works
We're a private company. We raise in focused rounds — each with a clear plan, named milestones and standard early-stage terms — and we treat reporting as part of the product.
Built for investors who think in years
Join the investor list
Tell us who you are. When a round is open, members hear first and get the full deck, financial model and data room.Standard terms
We raise on standard early-stage instruments prepared with counsel — the same structures used across U.S. startup investing.Radical reporting
Every investor gets our investor portal: monthly revenue, orders, acquisition cost, contribution and cash — the same numbers we run the company on.Long-term equity
Returns come the long way — through the company being acquired or shares sold in later rounds, typically over 5–8 years. No shortcuts promised.Investing in early-stage companies is risky and illiquid, and can result in the loss of your entire investment. Joining the list is not an investment and creates no obligation on either side.
The questions you should ask us
We'd rather answer the hard ones in writing than have you wonder.
You're early. Why invest now?
Because the risky part — can this machine work at all? — is already behind us. The marketplace, warehouse, vendor network, portals and AI layer are live and processing real orders end to end. Investment from here funds customers and scale, not experiments.
Early is also the point: the earliest investors buy in before the numbers make it obvious, and are rewarded for exactly that.
Can you really acquire customers profitably?
Today a paying customer costs us $15–25 on Google Ads and spends $65 per order, of which we keep about 31% after the vendor and shipping. That math is why we're confident — and we still plan as if acquisition costs rise with scale, release ad budgets in tranches tied to targets, and cut channels that miss for two months running.
Why would vendors give up 50%?
Because the alternative isn't keeping 100% of a U.S. sale — it's making no U.S. sale at all. For their share, vendors get warehousing, fulfillment, customs handling, photography, marketing, customer service and demand data, with no listing, storage, ad or shipping fees. For most of our 140+ vendors, Afrikart is their entire U.S. operation.
Why won't a big player copy you?
The defensible part isn't the website — it's the unglamorous middle: flying to meet a 12-person coffee cooperative, qualifying them, handling their export paperwork, consolidating their inventory in Oregon and answering their customers' emails. Big platforms are structurally built to avoid that work. Every vendor we onboard makes our catalog harder to replicate from a desk.
When do investors see money back?
Equity in a private company pays the long way: typically Years 5–8, through an acquisition or later investors buying shares. There are no scheduled repayments, and anyone promising otherwise at this stage should worry you. What we commit to instead is honest monthly reporting through our investor portal, so you always know exactly where things stand.
Could I lose everything?
Yes. Early-stage investments fail more often than they succeed, and nothing on this page is a guarantee. Invest money you can afford to leave invested for years — and verify everything we claim through the deck, the data room and the live numbers we share with members of our investor list.
Isn't this a niche store?
Heritage shoppers are our launch wedge, not our ceiling. Most buyers of specialty coffee, spices, shea butter or handmade jewelry have no heritage tie at all — they buy for taste, craft, ingredients and story, in categories worth hundreds of billions. Origin is our hook and supply advantage; the market is anyone who wants a better product with a real story, delivered domestically.
Close to supply, close to customers
Founded and run by people who live both sides of this problem — with sourcing next to the makers and fulfillment next to the customers.
Gemadi Bekuto — Co-Founder
Logistics, operations and U.S. receiving, including the Oregon warehouse and the fulfillment workflow.
Adam Taddese — Co-Founder
Vendor development, sourcing and brand growth, including supplier relationships and catalog expansion.
Join our investor list
Tell us a little about yourself. Members hear first when a round opens and receive the full deck, financial model and data room. We reply personally.
Build the bridge with us
Join Afrikart's investor list to receive our story in full — and first access to the deck, financial model and data room whenever a round is open. Serious, long-term investors only; we'll reply personally.
Gemadi Bekuto & Adam Taddese, Co-Founders · Chidozie, Corporate Affairs
[email protected] · Afrikartt.com · Oregon, United States