E-commerce platform Sky.Garden removes 1,500 vendors over counterfeiting claims

Sky.Garden, a Kenyan e-commerce platform for electronics and home products such as furniture, removed 1,500 of its 30,000 vendors in a “clean up” of counterfeit goods. The company dismissed claims that some vendors were boycotting the platform. 

“We have not observed any boycotts from vendors. However, we recently conducted a thorough cleanup of the marketplace. This process involved removing brokers and sellers of counterfeit or substandard goods,” Sky.Garden told TechCabal in a statement.

The e-commerce platform has also removed brokers who falsely claimed to be sellers. Brokers help vendors sell their products on marketplaces, but they do not own any merchandise. 

Sky.Garden’s crackdown on counterfeit goods conflicts with claims by at least three vendors that they were unfairly removed from the platform. Several other vendors stopped posting their products on Sky.Garden’s e-commerce site, those people claimed.

At least five customers also told TechCabal that their electronic orders from Sky.Garden were never delivered and the company promised refunds. 

“We were told to wait for up to 24 hours to receive a refund,” said one customer who waited three weeks for the refund.

Sky.Garden said some refunds were delayed because of complications with select merchants. “However, we have since resolved these issues, and all outstanding refunds have been processed,” the company said. 

Sky.Garden claims it has a 75% fulfillment rate and an average commission of 8%.  Fulfillment rate is the percentage of customer orders that are successfully processed and delivered on time. 

In 2022, Sky.Garden was acquired by buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) firm Lipa Later for KES 250 million ($1.93 million). The acquisition was a lifeline for the struggling company which  announced layoffs of over 50 employees. Some of those employees were retained after the acquisition. 

“The transition over the past year has been a continuous learning experience, and we’re proud of the progress we’ve made. Our primary focus remains to position Sky.Garden as Kenya’s leading marketplace,” Wanjiru added.

As sister companies, Sky Garden customers use Lipa Later’s BNPL services to spread out payments for online purchases.