The best reason is that it’s one of the few businesses where you can test demand for a few thousand rand instead of a few hundred thousand. A physical shop needs a lease, fit-out, stock and staff before you find out whether anyone wants what you’re selling. An online store needs a Shopify or WooCommerce site, a payment gateway like PayFast or Yoco, a courier account with The Courier Guy or PUDO, and a small first batch of stock. If it flops, you’ve lost a month and some ad spend, not your house.
It also lets you start small and keep your job. Plenty of stores begin as a side hustle run in the evenings, with orders packed at the kitchen table. You only go full-time once the numbers justify it.
You also own the customer. If you sell through Takealot or Facebook Marketplace, the platform controls the relationship and can change the rules overnight. Your own store gives you the email list, the order history and the brand, and those keep paying you back through repeat sales long after the first purchase.
Reach is the other draw. A store in Newcastle can sell to someone in Cape Town or Polokwane the same day it launches, and lockers and pickup points have made delivery to smaller towns far more reliable than it was five years ago.
The honest counterweight is that starting is easy and staying alive is hard. Margins get eaten by courier costs, returns, ad spend and payment fees, and most new stores die because the owner never worked out their numbers per order or picked a product with no real edge. “Why start one” is the easy question. A better one is whether you have a product people will search for or buy on impulse, at a price that leaves room after shipping and ads. If you can answer that, the case for starting is strong.