Businesses learning the ropes, seeing benefits of e-commerce
For the past eight months, 60 small- and medium-sized businesses throughout Nova Scotia have been taking part in the e-commerce training program Retail Revival.
Launched by online marketplace leader eBay Canada and Halifax Regional Municipality in January, the Retail Revival program is designed to help small and medium-sized retailers harness the power of e-commerce and global trade.
A global initiative, Nova Scotia was selected as the first province in Canada to offer the Retail Revival program because of the “tremendous opportunity,” said Camille Kowalewski, head of communications for eBay Canada and Latin America in an interview.
While there is a “great entrepreneur spirit” in the province,
Kowalewski said when they first came to Halifax there was a clear narrative that businesses were hesitant to start to selling online.
“Some thought it was competitive, cannibalistic even to their main street stores and we thought what an opportunity to show them how e-commerce is not only complementary, but it’s a huge opportunity to grow their business not only across Canada but across the world.”
Kowalewski said they had hundreds of applications from across the province seek to participate in the program, which officially kicked off in March. “We selected 60 of them. We wanted to be able to give the right size for one on one attention and support for the 12 months of the program.”
For the first few months, the program is very much focused on the eBay platform ins and outs, said Kowalewski, and as the participants have became more familiar, the program is broadened out to support sellers, businesses and entrepreneur skills, e-commerce in general.
“It’s a very well-rounded program. Participants walk away feeling like they know everything they need to know about eBay, in addition to shipping and exporting and how to sell through social media. It’s a very well-rounded program for businesses looking to get online and exporting.”
Feedback from the participants has been positive, said Kowalewski.
“A lot of them are new to e-commerce and exporting. A quarter of the cohort have never been online before, 40 per cent have never sold outside of Nova Scotia and 75 per cent of cohort were brand new to eBay, so it was a learning curve. We had to help people create their stores, teach the ins and outs of using a marketplace which is different than building a website ... a lot of learning but overall the cohort is really engaged. Overall, I would say the businesses that are the most engaged are getting the most out of it. They’re seeing the best results.”
Kowalewski said, while there are many businesses in the province who do online marketing and sales, “we’re just scratching the surface. We see thousands of eBay sellers from Nova Scotia selling hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Nova Scotia is not new to eBay. There are many businesses who have caught on.”
Kowalewski said study data analysis looking at eBay sales activities per capita in Canada show, “a lot of the hot spots are not major urban centres.” Victoria, Annapolis and Pictou are the top three hot spots in Nova Scotia.
“You don’t have to be tied to an urban centre to have a thriving business online,” said Kowalewski. By having an online presence “you’re not tied to that specific local economy. You can still live and work in the community, hire from community but your opportunities are beyond that community so you’re not tied to just the local economy.”
Once the Retail Revival Program wraps up next February, Kowalewski said eBay Canada would like to keep the partnership with Nova Scotia going in some capacity.
“We’ve created such a great foundation with local partners ... there’s a tremendous opportunity to keep the relationship going. A lot of the content that we’ve been giving to the cohort, we’d love to be able to share that content with businesses that are interested in getting online and exporting through eBay.”