A Kingston shopping mall opened with eight stores in last week. Except you won't be able to find the mall anywhere in the capital, quite simply because it is online.

VirtualMallJamaica.com, which is launched by Unique Media Design Limited Jamaica, provides a portal for small Jamaican businesses looking for a cheap and convenient e-commerce solution. $15,000 upfront and a $5,000 monthly subscription provides a business with a website and software to manage their payment and shipping, delivered within seven to eight days, promises Ronald Stephenson, Unique Media chairman and chief executive officer.

Stephenson is hoping that with an increasing number of Jamaicans not only accessing the Internet, but also shopping online, businesses and customers will be attracted to Virtual Mall. There also exists the potential for attracting overseas customers. For example, the unrelated RedPepperMall.com, now relocated from Kingston to South Florida, is an e-commerce website that supplies overseas customers with Jamaican products, mainly foodstuffs.

"Well, we realised that in Jamaica itself the use of Internet technology is increasing and more and more businesses are seeing the opportunities online. What we have done is to create a virtual small business solution at an affordable rate, so they can take their business online without the hassle and cost of going to a developer and waiting months for it to happen," said Stephenson.

He believes that many businesses are ignoring the current trend of higher-income Jamaicans who prefer to go online and buy from mainly United States-based websites with their credit cards and then have their goods shipped to Jamaica via courier services such as Mailpac Services Limited and Global Couriers Services Limited.

It's a fertile market said Stephenson, who as a customer of Global Couriers notes the amount of goods being processed by that company, which bills itself as 'Jamaica's fastest growing e-Commerce solutions provider'. Christopher Barrett, who is the CEO of that company said that his experience suggests that there is a viable market for Jamaican e-commerce.

"E-commerce is definitely here to stay and Jamaicans have been importing from the United States and Europe for a long time and e-shopping is convenient and even more so companies like mine," said Barrett. "Virtual Mall, I think, is an excellent idea but it's early days. I think it should work because once people wont the convenience rather than going to the mall, especially at Christmas. If it works for overseas merchants then I don't see why it shouldn't work locally in terms of Ronald's idea."

At stake believes Stephenson are three factors: Price; convenience and time and money saved that would otherwise be spent physically shopping for the goods.

"The consumers are loving the convenience and are saying to me everyday 'I wish this could be up for Christmas and I could plan how to shop.' They can now save time and gas which is one of the biggest cost factors right now so the consumers are ready but guess who aren't ready - the vendors. They are asking questions but they are still skeptical about online," he said.

However, he said that with search engine optimisation (SEO) - ensuring that websites show up prominently in search engine results - those companies who are hosted by Virtual Mall could generate new customers online, both from Jamaica and abroad.

"It gives them another medium, once Virtual Mall can market itself well enough and you can go online, because people do online shopping all the time from Jamaica - eBay and Amazon - the Internet penetration rate is increasing because we're getting the investment in telecommunications and the prices are going down. E-commerce allows the small persons a way, another medium to get their products out there," said Don Gittens senior consulting officer for investment promotion with Jamaica Trade and Invest (JTI), which put Virtual Mall in touch with several interested exporters.

The implications for overheads are also significant since a website can reduce, or more optimistically eliminate, the need for a physical storefront, said Stephenson. The more companies that open stores with Virtual Mall, the more customers that are likely to be attracted by an increased choice of goods, he reasoned - currently there are approximately 10,000 product categories.

"You could get more traffic online than in your own store! That will create more convenience where people will find if more comfortable to go online rather than come into your store and if your online sales exceed those of your sales in your plaza then what decision would you make? You might consider to go strictly with a storeroom and eliminate a lot of overheads," he said.

Without marketing, he reported that some of the Virtual Mall sites are recording up to average 150 unique visits. One vendor, Home Choice Enterprises Limited, has already recouped its initial Virtual Mall signing-on fee and monthly rental.

Home Choice Managing Director Kareema Muncey said that she was optimistic of sales growth via HomeChoiceStores.com, with pre-Virtual Mall customers coming from as far away as Malaysia.

"We started three weeks ago with Virtual Mall on a Friday and by Monday we had three orders from the United States and I was so excited because this was my first online sale. I found them to be very professional. I didn't have to tell them anything, apparently they read about us and I only had to ask them for minor changes online, unlike our previous website," said Muncey.

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