A new online shopping mall set up on the initiative of the IT Ministry opened today, featuring 37 shops with over 4,000 products.
TrolleyMania.com, as the venture is called, is aimed at all local businesses which want to venture into the world of e-commerce and start selling their products online, the ministry said,
The project is a public-private partnership between Government and Alert Communications.
IT Minister Austin Gatt said that such an important project should have been an initiative driven by the private sector and not by government. Over the years and through multiple initiatives, the government has encouraged citizens to get connected to the internet and statistics shows that 69% of Maltese used the internet on a regular basis with 99% of them using it from home.
Although 73% of the local online population recently made an online purchase, only 7% of purchases were made through local online retailers.
"We want to change this scenario by supporting local businesses of all types and sizes in their online endeavours and this is precisely what we're doing today" Dr Gatt said.
Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business Jason Azzopardi said that the government was committed to creating the ideal environment for SMEs by giving them the appropriate tools to work with. Trolleymania, he said, was one such tool.
TrolleyMania has offered participating retailers a start up fee of €250 (excl. VAT), a €232 (excl. VAT) fee per annum and a transaction charge of 0.25% (excl. VAT) on purchases.
MITA chairman Claudio Grech said that another eight retailers are in the process of joining TrolleyMania.
"Our initial target was to have 50 retailers by October, 2011, but we will surpass this target much sooner," he said.
He said that meetings were held with GRTU representatives at an early stage in order to explain the concept of the eMall. "We also offered to waive the setting-up fee for all GRTU members and provide free seminars for all their members on how they can market and differentiate their business online.
"Unfortunately the GRTU turned down all our offers and instead suggested having the eMall made up solely of very small businesses. Even though we do support micro-enterprises, such eMall portals need to have a critical mass of various sized retailers in order to attract customers" said Mr Grech.
Last month, the GRTU expressed concerns that the e-mall would not serve to help small retailers, as originally envisaged, but would actually widen the gap between them and bigger businesses.
See also:
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20100917/local/grtu-worried-e-mall-project-will-harm-small-businesses