This is a moment to balance the skills of the Old and New Economies,'' says El Sitio co-founder Roberto Vivo. The trend will be more and more merging online with offline,'' says South-Net CFO Sebastian Villa. That's because barriers to e-commerce are high in Latin America. That means sites must set up alternative payment methods, such as bank transfers. But the main problem is convincing Latin Americans to buy online.
Many sites fall short in terms of product selection and prices, while customer service is abysmal.
So there's little repeat business. For those Netrepreneurs who want to keep flying solo, cost control is key. Loquesea is also on the verge of closing a third round of financing. The irony is that some Latin Net companies spent fast and furiously in their early days, because that's just what their backers wanted them to do. But operations in smaller countries delivered almost nothing in the way of sales and eventually had to be closed.