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Ferrit was Fated to Fail News item January 2009: Telecom announced it is to close www.ferrit.co.nz Ferrit came into being with a Flawed Business Plan As in: "It was considered that following the success of Trademe, New Zealanders have an interest in buying online therefore an opportunity exists for someone (Telecom) to profitably sell online new products" Trademe is firstly an auction site, its success was in providing a service whereby people could buy and sell from one another and although other auctions sites existed and still exist, Trademe captured the minds of the public. But more importantly such sites are engaged in providing a platform for what is known as "selling the long tail", a platform where goods and products, new and old were made available for sale from anywhere in the country. The public could find the items the wished to buy that were not readily available elsewhere, or if they were available, the knowledge that they existed had not previously been brought to the public's attention. The market place was opened up to many. But this on its own would not have assured success, there had to be people willing to participate and such people exist for we are now in the Internet Age. The market place for new products already existed; it exists in the retail stores all over the country. And as stated by the New Zealand Retailers Association when they were being dismissive of the Web "people will always buy retail". I cannot disagree with their statement but before people can buy they firstly must be made aware that the goods and products are available for sale. The majority of the public use the Web to research what new products are for sale and once they have this knowledge they are in a position to approach the retailers' store. The purpose of advertising is to inform and the web is the facilitator of information It is a media used by millions of people to find what is available to buy. But if the general public cannot find online what they require from a businesses website they will buy elsewhere. That New Zealanders as individuals extensively use the Web is undisputed but New Zealand businesses have been very slow to use the Web as a business tool and have not grasped the facts that doing business on the Web requires skills, knowledge, a plan and an infrastructure to support Putting up a Website does not place a business in the 21st century, given that the majority of their websites are slow loading with poor navigation and they are not search engine friendly. This means that should a potential customer wish to purchase or even obtain knowledge as to product availability they are soon put off by the businesses complete disregard for the needs of the customer? Ferrit had a plan to place businesses who wish to sell new products online, all in one place. The Web does not work that way, people who search on the web are product focused not site focused, they are searching for a particular item, they have little interest in visiting a domain name that may or may not have what they require. And all the costly extensive offline advertising will not change their minds Ferrit was to also act as a gateway to the retailers' place of business, the retailer being responsible for the supply of the product(s) to the customer but if the business had not yet grasped that doing business in the 21st century requires skills and knowledge and an infrastructure additional to what they used in the offline stores, customer satisfaction was never guaranteed. The demise of Ferrit in the physical sense will not be a great loss for it never ranked as a biggie. It was all advertising hype. But its demise will leave a gap which has to be filled, for the public does go online to buy or if not to buy online, to research online so they can buy offline. Hopefully the business operators and owners involved will not adopt the position of "The Web does not work" The Web works fine, I know it does, in 1999 I was selling on the Web, New Zealand products mainly to overseas customers. It is just a matter of learning new skills and having the necessary infrastructure Customers are out there, they are online searching, we are in the 21st century. New Zealand business owners may have the reputation of not being the brightest things on two wheels when it comes to doing business in the Internet Age but it doesn't have to be that way. Ferrit is gone, learn from it, go online and study and learn what has and is being done overseas. New Zealand businesses have a lot of catching up to do. The Web is not going to go away, customers are online and it is time New Zealand businesses went online correctly. Their business depends on it. Contact Us