Helping Small Businesses in Singapore to Sell Online

Singapore, 20 March 2012 – Wouldn’t it be great for your business if customers would automatically recommend your products to all their friends? Good news for online shops – they can now install TackThis onto their websites to allow this to happen.

Singapore’s e-commerce market is forecasted to reach $4.4 billion by 2015[1]. However, only 15% of SMEs have a website with full e-commerce capabilities[2]. This is because small businesses may not have the technical expertise, resources or time to set up and maintain ecommerce capabilities. Local start-up company, PayWhere Pte Ltd, aims to help small businesses with their online retail problems. Their flagship product, TackThis, allows businesses to set up a full e-commerce solution on any website or social network and to manage the online retail shop with a centralised inventory and customer system. PayWhere today announced that TackThis has a new Share Promotion feature, which incentivises customers to share their purchases on Facebook.

TackThis is a user-friendly system, which can be incorporated on websites, blogs, and social media platforms such as Facebook. The TackThis system consists of a product catalogue (for customers to easily view products), a payment gateway (for customers to conveniently pay for their products) and an inventory management system (for retail merchants to effectively streamline all sales). TackThis has been in open beta since September 2011, and to date, nearly 1,000 retail merchants have signed up.

The newly-launched Share Promotion feature leverages upon the fact that shopping for many people is a social experience. People frequently want to show friends their purchases, seek opinions and get feedback. The TackThis Share Promotion feature allows retail merchants to give their customers a discount on their purchase, when they share a picture of it on their Facebook page. As this leverages upon a customer’s Facebook networks with viral marketing effects, this feature will be a boon for small businesses.

“When I heard about TackThis’ Share Promotion feature, I immediately incorporated it into Magic Global’s Facebook Shop,” said Bigy Tan who owns Magic Global, a small business that sells health products.  “Getting word-of-mouth referrals is one of the best ways for us to market our products, especially since an existing customer’s Facebook friends are likely to also fall within our target audience. Furthermore, with the discount element, we are able to boost customer loyalty at the same time. I have already seen a 15% increase in sales, after installing TackThis on my website and Facebook, and I am hoping to see a further increase in revenue with the new Share Promotion feature.”

Advantages of TackThis
TackThis provides numerous advantages for both the retail merchant and their customers. The benefits of TackThis to retail merchants are:

–          A complete e-commerce solution for the layperson – Individuals can incorporate all TackThis features, such as a product catalogue, shopping cart and payment gateways, without any coding or technical knowledge

–          Increase work efficiency – The inventory check list and customer management systems are centralised, allowing retailers to efficiently check on stock or engage with their customers

–          Gets people talking and buying – By installing TackThis onto social media platforms, retailers can be where their customers are. The new Share Promotion feature encourages customers to talk about the product, widening retailers’ reach.

–          Fast and convenient – It takes just five minutes to install TackThis onto retail merchants’ websites

–          Boosts customer loyalty – TackThis incorporates a coupon code engine to reward loyal customers. 

The benefits of TackThis for customers are:

–          TackThis has multiple payment options – This provides customers with increased flexibility and convenience, as they can pay for the products, with the click of a button. The payment options include credit card, Paypal, internet banking, ATM transfer and MOL payment.

–          The professional product catalogue makes it easy to browse, with multiple photos and a zoom feature to view the detailing of the products

–          Social interaction – TackThis encourages customers to share their latest purchases with friends who may have similar tastes and interests

PayWhere’s entrepreneurial journey
PayWhere is a company started by Dickson Gregory, a graduate from the National University of Singapore (NUS), along with two other friends, Vincent Lau and Damian Chow. Dickson recognised the hassle of collecting payments on line and began the company, while he was still a student, from the NUS Faculty of Real Estate. 

Paywhere is being incubated by NUSEnterprise. The company has leveraged upon advice from NUSEnterprisementors, who help in areas such as business development, market positioning and fund raising. The co-founders of PayWhere have also benefited from attending business clinics, as well as access to legal, accounting and administration services, which has allowed them to focus on building the company and product. Prior to moving to its current location in Blk71, PayWhere was based within the NUSEnterpriseincubator at the Faculty of Engineering.

“Social commerce is rapidly becoming the preferred way to do business online. With the convenience, connections and marketing opportunities, it is a win-win situation for both customer and retail merchant. We set up TackThis to revolutionise online shopping, making it fun, social and seamless. We hope that this innovative tool will help small blog-shop businesses inSingaporeto boost their efficiency and increase revenues,” said Dickson Gregory, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder PayWhere.

Businesses wishing to sign up with TackThis may visit www.tackthis.com or call (65) 6777 2317.

[1] PayPal. http://www.techinasia.com/the-stats-and-facts-of-online-shopping-in-singapore/

[2]Singapore ecommerce survey. http://www.slideshare.net/tonygutao/singapore-ecommerce-survey-2009-2010-report

Arup wins BRW Client Choice Awards 2012

March 2012 – Arup has been announced as Best Engineering firm at the 2012 BRW Client Choice Awards. This year Arup was a finalist in three categories: best West Australian firm, most innovative firm and best engineering firm greater than $200m.

“We are honoured to receive this award. Client collaboration is one of the key differentiators that we highlight within our Australasia Regional Strategy – these awards help us to reinforce this point of differential.” – Peter Bailey, CEO of Arup in Australasia.

The BRW Client Choice Awards are based on quantitative research into buyers of professional services, conducted independently by Beaton Consulting.

This year Beaton Research and Consulting received more than 27,500 responses from clients across various sectors, who were asked to rate the performance of firms they had worked with on a broad range of attributes including service, value for money, commerciality and innovation.

The selection of the finalists and winners is determined exclusively by the data. There is no judging panel; it is the opinions of clients that count towards the Awards.

The full list of award winners will be published in BRW Magazine on 15 March and is also available on the Beaton Global website.

About Arup
Arup has been in Singapore since 1968, and is part of a global design, engineering and business consultancy with a staff of over 10,000 spanning 90 offices in 35 countries. The firm’s creative spark is derived from the beliefs and convictions of the firm’s founder, the engineer and philosopher Ove Arup. Arup people are driven to discover new ways to turn ideas into tangible reality. This passion is behind many of the world’s iconic architectural, engineering, infrastructure and planning projects. It is also behind the firm’s relentless pursuit of technical excellence and willingness to invest in research and innovation.

With more than 40 years in Singapore, the company has been instrumental in shaping Singapore’s skyline with projects such as OCBC Bank, UOB Centre, Marina Bay Sands^® integrated resort, The Helix, Singapore Flyer, Waterfront Promenade, and Singapore National Library. Some of Arup’s on-going projects in Singapore also include Gardens by the Bay, Singapore Sports Hub, South Beach, the renovation of Victoria Concert Hall and Victoria Theatre, and the rail projects Downtown Line 1, 2 and 3.

Seeking ever better ways to imagine, re-imagine and reshape the built environment.

We shape a better world.

iStockphoto Featured in New Selection of Immersive Full-Page iGoogle Themes

Singapore: March 6, 2012 — iStockphoto today announced a partnership with iGoogle to bring users a new selection of attractive, immersive full-page themes.  In addition, iGoogle users will receive a 20-percent iStockphoto discount when they visit www.istockphoto.com/igoogle.php.

In addition to adding gadgets for Gmail, news, photos, weather and more, users can now further personalize their iGoogle pages with background themes featuring iStockphoto, including their favourite themes from Gmail.

iStock is the original microstock and is the web’s favored source for user-generated, royalty-free stock photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash ™ and offers more than 10 million files.  Offering the best search tools in the microstock industry, iStock makes it easy for people to find the perfect image quickly.

“iGoogle provides tens of millions of people around the world with a personalized Google experience and the new themes featuring iStock imagery will help users make their pages more engaging,” said Rebecca Rockafellar, Senior Vice President of E-Commerce at Getty Images and General Manager of iStockphoto. “Since Google began incorporating our imagery into template designs for Blogger.com and most recently, themes for Gmail, we’ve received more than 10 million new visitors to iStock. We are thrilled about this next phase and making our content available to the vast iGoogle audience base.”

The collection of new themes featuring iStock imagery is available globally and can be seen in the iGoogle theme directory. Favorite themes and gadgets can be shared on Google+ by clicking the +1 button.

About iStockphoto
iStockphoto offers easy, affordable inspiration with millions of vetted, royalty-free photos, illustrations, video, audio and Flash^® files. Using the most advanced search in the business, customers download a file every second from a collection of more than ten million files for business, marketing and personal projects. iStockphoto started in 2000, pioneering the micropayment photography business model, and has become one of the most successful and profitable user-generated content sites in the world. iStockphoto is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Getty Images.