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One year of successful growth for ShipLowCost.com
According to Eurostat, in 2012, 45 % of individuals across the EU’s 27 countries made online purchases within the 12 months prior to the survey date. This figure had grown from 30% in 2007 and from 40 % in 2010.
Other statistics reveal how 38% of Maltese prefer cross-border online shopping rather than domestic online shopping and over the past five years, Malta has seen the largest increase in the proportion of online cross-border shoppers (21 percentage points).
Launched a year ago, Express Group developed ShipLowCost.com out of a need by a growing number of customers who wanted to order specific products from certain markets and were finding it difficult to have these items shipped to Malta. This difficulty was either because of a missing link in the delivery route, or simply because shippers and buyers have no guarantee that the product will be delivered safely.
To date, the web portal has managed to score some very satisfactory results. In the first year of operations, thousands of orders have been placed which saw the safe delivery of more then 7,000 packages throughout Malta and Gozo. In a year the popularity of the site has gone viral with the website ShipLowCost.com clocking over 75,000 hits.
"Malta is an island and cross-border online shopping is a reality which is becoming constantly more prevailing. We saw an opportunity in this and the success that ShipLowCost.com has garnered over this past year, proved us right," said Johann Vella, Managing Director of Ship Low Cost.
Today, the service operates from four depots, in the UK, Germany, Italy and France. Customers buying from any of these countries, choose the depot in that country, ask for their product to be delivered to that depot and ShipLowCost delivers their product from their depot of choice right up to their door.
"Tapping into a customer service with a door to door delivery service was a different challenge for Express Group whose core business over the past 40 years has been dealing with transportation and logistics services for businesses. This was our first experience however, we had invested in a solid platform, an efficient website and e-shopping infrastructure and our service is backed by our experience in the transport business which has already given us an excellent reputation," explains Johann Vella.
"Having said that, dealing with individual customers can be challenging at times because of the particular requirements and expectations. However, we are proud of our service and half of our business is coming from word of mouth referrals. Customers are writing back to us and complementing us on the timely service, the reliability that we offer and the efficient platform which we operate on," added Mr Vella.
"Our reliability and safety have been tried and tested and we are proud of this service which we plan to keep expanding and improving for the benefit of our increasing customer base," concluded Johann Vella.
As it celebrates its first successful year of operations, www.ShipLowCost.com is sponsoring the Express Trailers Zurrieq Half Marathon 2013 due on the 3rd of November.
Applications for the 21km half marathon, the 10km race and a 10km walkathon are open on www.maltamarathon.com. Applications close on the 20th October.
