New site to showcase city retail

A new website is being set up as part of a strategy to showcase Invercargill and what it has to offer.

At a council finance and policy meeting on Tuesday, council city centre co-ordinator Kari Graber said the website was needed.

The website, to be made by Wellington e-commerce service Storbie, is part of an Invercargill retail strategy and re-branding project at the hands of retail consultants First Retail Group.

At the meeting, Cr Toni Biddle said there was a lot of work going in to the website.

She called the incredible idea’’.

However, Biddle questioned if there were any other websites that were currently set up for Invercargill shoppers that may have the existing online traffic.

They may be able to merge with that website ‘‘so that we’re not reinventing the wheel’’, Biddle said.

‘‘I am just trying to think from a social media perspective.’’ Graber said there was nothing. ‘‘That’s why we’re doing this with Storbie.

‘‘It’s because when people Google ‘shopping in Invercargill’, what comes up is the pawn shop.

‘‘So, that’s your first point of entry when you go shopping in Invercargill,’’ she said.

‘‘And if you are to Google ‘Invercargill’, you’re most likely to go to the Southland site which will take you through and show you destinations of Fiordland and website ’’an what’s happening in the general area of Southland.’’

That website, run by Venture Southland, did not actually show what the Invercargill CBD and city had to offer, she said.

The Storbie website would be shoppers’ ‘‘first port of call’’ for Invercargill retail, she said.

A report from Graber to the committee says the website would showcase the city’s shopping, services and hospitality.

Retailers would be able to highlight three products each, free of charge, so they could better showcase what they had on offer and would also be able to set

up an e-commerce platform to sell products, at a fee payable to Storbie.

The website was scheduled to launch in October, 2017, in time for Christmas shopping.

Graber said the website would be in the same format as the Gore retail website, which was launched when the town announced its new retail campaign.

The website helped Gore improve its retail offering, and was part of what it assimilated to fill its empty shops, she said.

‘‘At one point, they had no empty shops and now they have maybe three.

‘‘They sort of suffered from the same problem.’’

Graber said the city council was on track to implement events and initiatives to boost city retail.

This included the First Retail Group’s retail strategy, which the council gave the green light in April.

‘‘We’re ticking boxes as we go.’’