sba pushing online shopping

E-commerce is coming!

 

Speaking to The Barbados Advocate yesterday, Chief Executive Officer of the Small Business Association (SBA), Lynette Holder, revealed that consumers will soon be able to purchase products from a variety of local micro, small and medium enterprises online.

 

“We are going to be introducing our online facility that consumers can actually shop in the marketplace on the website in this financial year. So we are getting ready for that now,” she stated at the Savannah Hotel for the SBA’s Youth Forum. The forum is part of the association’s week of activities.

 

“We are right now wrapping up with our banking partner, the e-commerce facility, we have already identified a distribution system that we will be using so that as persons purchase the items, we will have a delivery system that would allow for them to receive their goods within at least 48 hours. Ideally, we would like this to be 24 hours, but we are using 48 hours as our starting point,” she added.

 

Holder said that this system, which is Phase Two of the SBA’s Be SME Smart Campaign, should be in place by December in order to take full advantage of the Christmas shopping season.

 

She also highlighted that Phase One, the SBA’s Smart Card, was gaining in popularity, now claiming over 2 400 cardholders.

 

“We anticipate that during this week with the different promotions we have planned, we would be able to increase the numbers even further,” she said, while noting that since its relaunch cardholders had been receiving weekly email blasts on promotions at various companies. 

 

Currently, 250 firms are in the SBA’s marketplace.