The delivery driver, a forgotten rowing machine... and why we must act now to save Irish business

THE doorbell rang and I looked out the window and saw a lorry. I wasn’t expecting anyone to call, so I was wearing a fairly quizzical look when I opened the door to see a delivery man standing on the step with a large box. I looked at it, then looked at him, then looked at it again, and it slowly dawned on me.

‘Oh… gosh,’ I said as the realisation kicked in (actually, I didn’t say ‘gosh’, but this is a family newspaper).

‘Let me guess,’ he said, splitting his sides laughing. ‘New year, new you…?’

In the box was a gizmo called the WonderCore, a rowing machine designed to leave you with abs you could bounce pennies off. I did eventually remember buying it, for around €150 if memory serves, after seeing one of those television infomercials in the wee small hours during the week after Christmas. It’s the time when gluttony guilt kicks in and you can feel every last Cadbury Hero and slice of pudding doused in brandy butter migrating to your waistline.

Impulse

The money I spent on the WonderCore went to England, not to anyone in Ireland, where no doubt I could have bought a similar machine if I had been bothered. Instead, this was an impulse buy, truthfully after a few more sherberts than might have been advisable, and it all was made so simple thanks to the internet.

I thought about it yesterday after reading the Irish Daily Mail story on a survey by PayPal that showed we spent €2.7billion online last year with retailers based overseas. That is money that has evaporated from our own economy, money that could have created jobs, and generated tax revenue. As it stands, the only Irish person who made even a cent out of it was the man on the doorstep, who was still smiling as he got back into the cab of the truck. He, no doubt, saw the same little scenario play out several times a day.

It is easy to understand why people shop online, because I do it all the time myself. Indeed, I’m fairly certain I spend well over €1,000 a year with foreign retailers. You’re surfing the net, usually social media sites, and pop-up advertisements convince you your life is not complete without things you didn’t even know existed. How else do you explain the fact that I now have a device made solely for avocados, with a cutter at one end to halve them, a grip in the centre that removes the stone safely (‘avocado hand’ – when people accidentally stab themselves trying to remove the stone – is increasingly seen in hospital A&E departments, and tendon injuries can be difficult to repair), and a concertina device at the other end that not only scoops out all the flesh but presents it in perfect slices?

I bought a gizmo that looks like a giant apple corer, but instead removes the seed pod from peppers; a tiny claw with what looks like a crane grabber, but which perfectly hulls strawberries; a twin-compartment plastic dish that makes perfect poached eggs in the microwave; one of those ridged metal plates that speeds up defrosting; and an inverted bowl into which you put all the ingredients for a salad then chop them up through gaps in the plastic, and so on.

I buy clothes online too, mostly from River Island. The nearest bricks-andmortar shop to me is less than 30km away, in Arklow, but I still order online. If you have them delivered to the shop, you don’t pay any shipping costs and it’s easy to send back anything you don’t like or that doesn’t fit. The sweetest words in the English language are ‘Click and Collect’, and they’re catnip to the terminally lazy like myself.

Ashamed

Often, I quickly try them on and anything that doesn’t fit is handed straight back at the register, and my debit card is refunded. It’s all so easy, it doesn’t feel like spending money at all.

The problem is that I am spending money, but I’m not spending it in Ireland. Instead, it’s adding to the bottom line in the UK, the United States, China, and heaven knows where else.

I even do it with books. There was a time when I would spend hours in bookshops glancing at the shelves, and something I never otherwise would have seen caught my fancy.

Now, I mostly just look at Amazon and download to my Kindle. This, in particular, makes me ashamed, because the independent book sector is under threat and my cash might help reverse the trend, but when e-books are so cheap, compara- tively speaking, and you can take half a dozen away on holidays on a lightweight device instead of using your meagre hand-baggage allowance, reason trumps emotion every time.

As for music, I pay a tenner a month to Spotify, and haven’t bought a CD for about three years. No wonder record shops have closed.

It still came a shock to learn from the survey that we are the least patriotic shoppers in the world, spending more with online retailers based outside the country than any nationality in the world. It is understandable too, though, at least in part. As a small country, and an island country at that, we don’t have physical access to some of the bigger stores that maintain a physical presence on the High Street in other countries. Yet even when they are here, as is the case with River Island in Arklow, I’m still buying online.

Staggering

It has to stop. The e-commerce market in Ireland is predicted to reach a staggering €10billion by 2020. Thanks to Click and Collect, and the likes of Parcel Motel and An Post’s AddressPal, the services that allow you buy goods not usually available for home delivery in Ireland, we might just as well wave a bunch of fivers in the wind on an east coast beach and watch them avariciously scooped up when they land on the shores of the UK.

Something has to be done about it. It’s not hugely expensive to set up online retail businesses, and they don’t all have to be on the scale of Amazon.

A couple of years ago, at the height of the fashion for laces in contrasting colours to the shoes, I could find nothing but black or brown here, and bought instead from a company called mylaces.com, which appears to be a small operation run from Marck-en-Baroeul, a suburb of Lille in northern France.

There’s absolutely no reason why a similar online shop couldn’t be set up here, though it probably would be impossible in areas where high-speed broadband still has not been delivered. This is incredibly frustrating, and the Government must work harder to help people get small online retail businesses off the ground and at least give those of us who are spending a fighting chance to spend our money here.

On another level, we all have to exercise caution, too. I’ve got a lot of use out of the poached egg maker and the avocado cutter, usually preparing breakfast with both served on toast, and the strawberry huller is practically essential when you live in Co. Wexford and have access to the finest strawberries in the country.

As for the WonderCore, well, don’t tell the delivery man, but nine months later, it’s still in its box .

Use it? I haven’t even had the time or energy to assemble it. I’m too busy shopping online.