Martine Rolls: Smell the (virtual) coffee

Monday's front page story, where Kiri Gillespie and Ellen Irvine report on the possible threat of online sales to retailers in the Bay, made perfect sense to me.
I love shopping and I have to admit that I do a large portion of it sitting at home behind my computer screen.
In the article, it was pointed out that more than a third of Kiwis' online shopping purchases this year would be made offshore.
I don't recognise this as such as my favourite online retailers happen to be New Zealand labels and other Kiwi companies. But if I want something that is not available here, or if the price for an item is better ordering from Singapore, then I will buy it from overseas.
Take the new All Blacks jersey, for instance, on the racks of New Zealand sport shops for the hefty price of $220. When we asked on our Facebook page this week if people were willing to pay that much for it, not only did most people answer "no way", our online friends were also eager to post links to places that sell them for half the price.
Many online stores offer free shipping worldwide or at least include this cost in the prices to make it look like it's free.
Currency converters are easy to use and conversion is often automatic as soon as you fill in what country you're from.
Without all that hassle, plus the faith in robust secure servers, it has become even more attractive to make a purchase online.
Tauranga Main Street manager Kirby Weiss pointed out in Monday's article that shopping is more about the expertise now rather than just purchasing a product.
"You can't beat going into a store that's owned by locals, run by locals, part of the local community. You can't get that feeling from an internet site," he says.
That may be so, but the last time I bought a dress from a locally owned and operated store in downtown Tauranga I wasn't that impressed with the expertise and service received. The sales lady wasn't friendly to say the least.
The only reason I went ahead with the purchase was that I am, and always will be, an easy target for a great bargain.
That said, I also really like receiving a package in the mail and the courier people that come to my door are also part of my local community. They give out smiles and great service too. Whichever way you look at it, I feel that I still somehow stimulate the local economy with my online buying.
Maybe it's time for retailers to wake up and get into e-commerce, to follow in the footsteps of plenty of other smart local business people. Take Chris and Rachelle Duffy from Idiom Boutique. They closed their Devonport Rd store on Easter Sunday this year and went full-out online, for no other reason than that it made perfect sense for their business.
"We want to do some different things with the website and that's where we see the future growth," they said.
Luckily, there are plenty of others in the Bay who are doing just that. Another one is Kelly Barribal who runs online store Gran's Loose Change. Social media makes up one third of her business. "I have not spent a cent on advertising," she says. Instead she uses social media and her blogs to attract customers.
Mount Maunganui-based Natureshop sells footwear, clothing and baby things with a focus on nature, sustainability and competitive prices. They have snatched up pretty much every available domain name that has anything to do with what they are selling, know a thing or two about search engine optimisation and have set up a bunch of feeder-sites to lead the public to their online store. They're also active on Facebook, which is where I found out that Natureshop has happy customers from Sao Paulo to Saha-Yakutia, Russia.
I'm trying to point out that while we might spend a good bit of money with online retailers overseas, people from all over the word are also buying from New Zealand-based online businesses.
Besides the few examples mentioned earlier, there are many other people in the Bay who have embraced the web and make good money using the internet and social media. Whether you have a great shop or a fantastic online concept, and I think it's probably best to have both, don't worry too much about the competition. If you do things right, you'll win.