By Sean Gallagher, Irish Independent – 15 December 2013
THERE are few businesses on the island of Ireland that can boast of having generated more than £1bn worth of turnover for their customers. But last week I travelled to Belfast to meet one company that has done just that.
Set up in 2005 and located in the Northern Ireland Science Park, in the city’s now famous Titanic Quarter, Export Technologies is a world-class provider of online retail software and services. Today the company employs 15 staff and has an annual turnover, itself, of £3m.
“We are specialists in developing e-commerce software that enables companies to maximise their online sales potential,” explains founder and CEO, Dan Loughlin. “We have developed e-commerce platforms that now transact millions of pounds for our customers every week,” he adds.
“We provide a full multi-channel solution that includes everything needed to sell successfully online, including a website, shopping cart, social media integration, multiple languages and currency options, full integration with stock management systems, report generation and payment processing solutions, such as RealEx, PayPal and WorldPay,” he explains.
TIME IS MONEY: Sean Gallagher, left, with Export Technologies CEO,
Dan Loughlin in its offices at the Northern Ireland Science Park, in BelfastThe company’s customers are drawn mainly from the retail, distribution and manufacturing sectors, where moving online can serve as an ideal vehicle to achieve both scale and market reach.
What is unique and exciting about the company is that it operates a revenue-share model with its customers where they receive a small percentage of all sales transacted through their customers’ websites.
“It’s an innovative approach in that companies are not faced with a large upfront cost and where the onus is on the internal team to drive traffic to a customer’s website,” he insists.
This model presents an obvious challenge for Dan and his colleagues to make sure they choose the right customers to partner with and in whom to invest time and resources. However, the company has shown that it has a good aptitude for choosing winners, among them its most successful customer so far – Chain Reaction Cycles.
The company was set up initially as a small shop in Ballyclare, Co Antrim, which sold bicycles and bicycle parts. Working with Dan to move its business online, the company went on to achieve what can only be described as meteoric growth. Last year, its turnover exceeded a staggering £150m, making it one of the most successful online businesses in the world.
