Retail businesses encouraged to enhance their online capability

Irish based retail businesses should enhance their online capability and presence in order to exploit new opportunities to increase turnover, to expand and to sell internationally.

This is according to Minister of State for Business, Employment and Retail, Damien English TD, who was speaking as he opened a new round of the Online Retail Scheme which supports ambitious Irish based retailers looking to grow and improve sales online and to strengthen their ecommerce capabilities.

The Scheme, administered by Enterprise Ireland, provides direct financial support to retail companies to develop a more competitive online business offering to complement their in-store offering and there is €9.3m available in this round of funding.

In order to be eligible for this funding, applicant companies must have 10 or more full-time employees and an existing online presence. Salary costs of an internal project champion can be partially covered by this support. This person can be any employee who has the support of the management to take on this responsibility, and will work with an external service provider on the project.

Previous applicants of the Online Retail Scheme who were unsuccessful will be eligible to reapply under this call with a modified proposal. Applicants who were successful in previous calls are also eligible to re-apply under this round of the scheme, once they propose a project that is clearly different from their previous applications.

The Online Retail Scheme is now open for applications today and will close on 1 June. Find further information and how to apply at www.enterprise-ireland.com