Appliances and Electronics worth more than 300 billion Uganda Shillings are imported and sold in Uganda every year. However, a significant portion of that is, unfortunately, counterfeit/fake or substandard.
A 2018 crackdown by UNBS found that as much as 80% of electronics sold in Kampala were either fake or substandard.
With that said, as a customer, you have to do your part in ensuring you purchase genuine appliances and electronics, not only in Kampala but wherever you are in the world. The one most proven way of ensuring you buy genuine products is “where you buy from”.
In this article, I share with you 3 places to buy genuine appliances and electronics from in Kampala, Uganda.
1. Authorised brand showrooms.
A number of manufacturers operate showrooms through their official, authorised country distributors. Though the prices are often the highest in these showrooms, you are likely to buy a genuine item there.
PS: Do not expect to find a variety of brands in one place, delivery services and aftersales services when you choose a showroom, unless your home or office is not far away from the showroom location.
2. Electronics Megastores.
You can call them electronics supermarkets or showrooms or megastores. There are several of them starting from Kampala road to Jinja road, to Lugogo shopping mall.
These come with the advantage that you get to find several brands in one place and can touch and feel before you take an item yourself.
Just as in the brand showrooms, the prices here are anything from too high to average but if your goal is to buy genuine there’s a level you might be willing to tolerate.
Delivery services are typically not part of the operations process of mega stores, but sometimes they might help a customer arrange to hire a car or bike to make their delivery within a limited distance.
PS: Not all products in the mega showrooms/supermarkets, including the one in Lugogo are genuine. You’ve got to be smart and ignore the fake or substandard ones.
3. Authorised Online Shopping Websites and Apps
Online stores offer convenient shopping for almost everything and electronics is just 1 of them. However, it is a known fact world-over that online shopping apps and websites are some of the biggest sellers of fake and substandard goods.
To be sure of buying genuine appliances and electronics in Uganda you may choose to deal with authorised online retailers of the brands you would like to purchase. Kweli.shop is an authorised retailer of various top brands including Ariston, Sony, LG, Kenwood, Moulinex and many more.
Alternatively, do due diligence on the online shopping platform. Is it a single retailer selling products online (like www.kweli.shop) or it’s a marketplace; a platform that connects buyers and sellers (like Jumia, Jiji)?
If it is a single vendor platform, verifying the single vendor might save the day. For the case of the multivendor platforms and marketplaces, you would need to additionally verify the individual sellers before you can make a purchase.
PS: In trying to verify the online sellers, try to ascertain if it is a legally registered entity, tax compliant and if it has a physical address. Most people just stop at finding out if the company has a physical address, forgetting that many dealers of counterfeits indeed have physical addresses.
Get Genuine, always.
