Free ecommerce accelerator hopes to get more Irish businesses selling online

NDRC’s Inventorium, a programme that helps individuals, startups, and existing businesses get ideas off the ground, in association with the Irish Internet Association (IIA), has launched Clicktailing, an ecommerce accelerator programme that hopes to get 20 Irish businesses selling along within five weeks.

Inventorium, a National Digital Research Centre (NDRC) programme, and the IIA will bring together all the ingredients and expertise needed to facilitate Irish businesses in selling online. Clicktailing, as the accelerator programme has been branded, will provide “hands-on support” for 20 small Irish businesses, providing services such as web design, guidance on online payment services, product photography, and marketing and shipping advice – all at no cost to the first round of 20 successful applicants.

Inventorium estimates that 140,000 Irish businesses do not yet engage in online commerce, and, rather worryingly, 50,000 Irish businesses don’t even have a website.

With Clicktailing, all 20 Irish businesses will launch their respective online stores and have the ability to accept orders online within five weeks of starting the programme. The programme, which is also supported by An Post, Ireland’s national postal service, and by the Crafts Council of Ireland, which promotes indigenous Irish craft products, will provide the necessary skills in online customer lifecycle, cost of customer acquisition, and social retailing.

It’s marketed as “the boldest retail experiment of 2013”, but with over half of all Irish online spend going to foreign companies, and an Irish Internet economy that’s predicted to double to 6% of GDP by 2016, it has to be.

Close of applications for Clicktailing participants is April 5.