Our Story

The Founder, a British citizen of Ethiopian origin, Dr. Bersisa Berri, was born and brought up in rural part of Ethiopia and educated and worked in the capital city, Addis Ababa (aka Finfinne). Some of his earliest childhood memories are getting up early in the morning before dawn walking through the morning dew barefoot to school and helping in the farms during spare time. While he was studying and working in Addis Ababa, he was going to ‘Merkato’ on regular basis to shop for his daily livings as well as to meet traders from his birthplace who come to buy commodities for their retail businesses. 

Merkato (Italian word ‘Market’) is an African largest open-air Marketplace in Addis Ababa. It is the oldest, busiest and chaotic market where a large variety of products and services are traded 24/7. It is an is amazing African largest market where complex business and visible and invisible trading activities take place. Although it is largest, chaotic, and sometimes confusing, you will find everything you need in life, though not without challenge. Merkato is the home of everything including Farm produces, live animals, industrial products, artistic materials, domestic goods, imported items, fake and genuine, old, and new, traditional, and modern and so on.

Dr.  Berri is always wondering about ‘Merkato’. There were many occasions when he was overwhelmed and got lost in Merkato shops and experienced buying fake products.  Return and refund is unexpected in Merkato as nobody even believe you bought from them. Once you buy and take the item, the relationship between the seller and buyer is over and the customer and shop owner don’t know each other unless you go back to buy another item.   

The chaos and beauty of Merkato resembles the present day complex online marketplace where you find everything you need, but not without challenges and juggling as you are overwhelmed and sometimes end up buying fake products and face difficulties in return and refund.

Dr. Berri was having over 25 years of all-round professional background with a wide range of experience of supporting businesses to achieve their dreams of highest growth and expansion. Although his expertise includes Business Development pertaining to Sales Advice, Strategy Formulation, Human Resource Development, digital transformation and information & knowledge management his inspiration and tendency was always to simplify digital  marketing. Despite juggling around in his profession and all the changes happen in his life, he didn’t stop pondering about what he left behind so many years back.

After finishing his PhD in business Administration in the UK and became principal business consultant, Dr. Berri found himself thinking about simplifying complex brick- and- mortar markets like Merkato through unique digital platform. He decided that it was time to tell the story of the Oldest and Chaotic journey life in Merkato vis-à-vis the current complex online market and bring this versatile inspiration into modern digital life and make it known to the world. He thinks how amazing it was to digitalize Merkato and simplify the shopping complexities. 

 

Having many years’ experience and being fascinated by this amazing African largest chaotic market, and the similarly complex current online shopping platforms, the founder named this business as Digital Merkato International (DMI). The DMI store is created with the spirit of challenging the existing ecommerce practices and solving the complexities of current online shopping as many shoppers lack clarity of what they buy and wonder which shop to visit and how certain they can be about the originality, values and benefits of the product advertised online.

Currently, online shopping is progressively increasing, especially due to the Covid- 19 Pandemic, as many people prefer to buy items without much contact with others and from the comfort of their own homes, workplace or on the go. The pandemic has accelerated the shift towards a more digital world and triggered changes in online shopping behaviors that are likely to have lasting effects. According to new data from IBM’s U.S. Retail Index, the pandemic has accelerated the shift away from physical stores to digital shopping by roughly five years. Since the pandemic started ecommerce trends and growth has accelerated by 10 years. Over 150 million people have shopped online for the first time in 2020. 

However, because of the non-physical nature of online shopping which physically separates customers from the product, shoppers worry and sometimes lack confidence whether the quality and performance of the product will match the product description and the possibility of late or failed deliveries and the hassles related to returns.

He started DMI store not just to sell products, he started the company because he is passionate about the mission. The founder is inspired by creating online store that is trustable, simple, worry-free, beautiful, and safe to shop on. He loves to make every shopping experience more personal and self-assured which is less addressed by many current online platforms including the e-commerce Giants.

DMI store is Behind the Confident Smile!

He was always pondering the standard and qualities of products we buy online and delivery and returns complexities we experience in online shopping. Inherently curious, he began asking himself why clarity, truthfulness, trust, and confidence is lacking from the products we buy online and how we get these things right.   

After long time researching and experiencing online shopping issues himself, Dr. Berri crafted a distinctive online platform that provide confidence in online shopping.