Sulit.com.ph, arguably the number one online Philippine marketplace where Filipinos can easily buy and sell items, is officially not in existence anymore.
According to its website, Sulit confirms that it has officially rebranded itself as OLX.ph – OLX being the company that bought over Sulit into its porfolio. OLX is also one of the biggest classified ads network in the world. In line with this change, Sulit.com.ph now redirects to OLX.ph, thereby completely abandoning the former’s brand name (and URL) in favor of the OLX brand.
This came as a surprise to some.
When the merger was first announced last year, OLX’s Philippine website gets redirected to Sulit.com.ph. Now it is the other way round. As to why this was necessary, the Sulit team said in an official statement:
“The objective of changing our name to OLX is to get the attention of every Filipino, that now’s the time to make some changes of their own and join the millions of people around the globe like in India, Brazil, and Portugal, who have already used OLX to sell their things. The name change to OLX aims to inspire Filipinos to re-think what they know about Sulit, and to re-think what they have to sell online. The name OLX originally came as an abbreviation of the phrase ‘online exchange’.”
In line with this rebranding, Sulit now sports OLX’s universal colors, especially in the top navigation bar. The pages itself still retains some “Sulit” corporate colors in it. Along with the rebranding too, the company has also upgraded its mobile apps to make it easier for Filipinos to use. Finally, Sulit’s customer service has also expanded to provide assistance at nights and even during weekends.
Prior to the rebranding, there are over 2.7 million active users using Sulit to buy and sell items. The website also received 12 million visits every day. With this merger, the company is looking at another potential reach of 1 million users.
As the biggest classified ads website in the Philippines, it is natural that there are some people who take advantage of Sulit’s easy registration and hassle-free posting system. There have been a number of reports in the media (and in the company’s forums) about how people are being scammed on the website.
The website’s easy registration and immediate posting of ads has proved to be something that can be abused easily. Because of that, the company has started to enforce a more stringent ad approval process. While it has improved the number of fake ads on Sulit, we definitely hope that OLX will continue to put in more resources to overcome this problem.
Also read: Where are Indonesians shopping online? These 3 websites should give you a good idea