Posts Tagged ‘business’

SurfStitch rides wave to success

Monday, July 1st, 2013

Garnering 30 million site visits and over 250 million page views since its launch in 2008 by Justin Cameron and Lex Pederson, SurfStitch, an online retailer that specialises in surf gear that is headquartered on the Gold Coast, is one of Australia’s most highly trafficked eCommerce sites and has pulled in $30 million in revenue for the company.

To read more about this story, click here or here.

The Iconic online retailer’s push to be number one finally catches up to it

Saturday, June 29th, 2013

The online retailer The Iconic (officially named Internet Services Australia 1 Pty Ltd in Australia) that popped up in 2011 and started laying waste to its bricks and mortar competitors is now itself in trouble.

Recent reports have emerged that The Iconic, which promises excellent service and speedy delivery as its selling points, is hemorrhaging both money and staff as it tries to cut costs to stop the bleeding.

From August 2011 to December 2012, Iconic had revenue of $30.6 million but a loss of more than $44.7 million.

The company’s owners, the German Samwer brothers have used a similar model of doing business that has led to great success in Germany, India, Singapore, Poland and the Philippines through their head company, Rocket Internet.

Internal documents from the company that had been obtained by the media show that the company’s business plan is to jump into new markets and become number one at any cost using the promise of free, overnight delivery.

And whilst it has worked in other markets, it seems to have stumbled in Australia so far.

To read more about this story, click here.

Wotif issues net profit downgrade

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

Brisbane-based online travel accommodation provider Wotif issued a net profit after tax downgrade to between A$50.5 million and A$51.5 million for the 2013 financial year, some of which was attributed to its Asia Web Direct domain names being affected by recent Google ranking criteria changes.

Wotif was started in 2000 by Graeme Wood and has $1.161 billion in revenue.

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Catch of the Day reels in major revenue

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

The online coupon site CatchOfTheDay.com.au, founded by Gabby Leibovich, netted an increase in revenue of 62% in 2012 to $230 million.

The site, which has distribution centres in Braeside and Truganina, Victoria, started in 2006 and has been going strong ever since.

To read more about this story, click here.

iSelect debuts, stumbles on ASX

Wednesday, June 26th, 2013

iSelect, an Australian online insurance comparison company, made the opposite of a splash when it listed on the Australian Securities Exchange recently. It started at A$1.85 per share but fell and closed at A$1.56 per share, losing 15.7 percent of its market capitalisation of A$479.3 million in the process.

Reasons given for iSelect’s poor performance were that its technology was “not groundbreaking” and it already has strong competition in its field with even more competition possible.

To read more on this story, click here or here.

Australia’s National Broadband Network could lead to boom for online startups

Tuesday, June 25th, 2013

As Australia continues to roll out its $38 billion National Broadband Network, which will bring high-speed internet to almost all the 23 million population of the country, some government higher ups are predicting a boom in online and high tech businesses.

“As the rollout of the NBN continues, the capacity for start-up companies, particularly in the tech and digital sectors, to create game-changing businesses and applications is unprecedented,” said Communications Minister Stephen Conroy, recently.

Currently, online and high-tech start-ups only account for about 0.1% of GDP and 9,500 jobs. But the sector is growing rapidly and a recent report by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC) suggests it could account for 4% of GDP and 540,000 jobs by 2033.

The rise of young startups has seen them start to populate the ranks of the Business Review Weekly Young Rich List, which ranks the wealthiest people in the country under 41.

The list includes 24 tech and online startup company founders, including: software entrepreneurs Mike Cannon-Brookes and Scott Farquhar at the top; PC Tools founder Simon Clausen at No. 4; serial entrepreneur specialising in online retail sites Ruslan Kogan at No. 8; Bigcommerce founders Mitchell Harper and Eddie Machaalani at No. 10; and freelancer.com founder Matt Barrie at No. 50.

To read more on this story, click here.

iPledg grows business while helping others to do same

Saturday, June 22nd, 2013

Started in 2011 in Queensland and boasting $500,000 of revenue in 2012, iPledg founders Bryan Vadas and Andy Tompkins have continued to grow the online crowd funding platform while helping other businesses and community projects get off the ground by connecting the people with the ideas directly with potential backers.

To read more about this story, click here and here.

Online orders in Australia see huge increase

Friday, June 21st, 2013

Online business in Australia has jumped by 25%.

Orders made over the internet, including both within Australia and from overseas, reaped more than $237 billion in revenues in the 2011-12 financial year over the year before, according to the IT Use and Innovation in Australian Business report released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics this week.

Information media and telecommunications businesses received the most online orders in 2011-12, followed by wholesale trade manufacturing whilst agriculture, forestry and fishing had the lowest proportion of online orders.

To read more on this story, please click here.

 

 

The One Pager theme by WooThemes

Wednesday, June 5th, 2013

The One Pager is a modern, clean, and fresh theme design for WooCommerce. It is a scrollable and very flexible theme, you can easily customize the modules to get the looks you require. It incorporates many features, such as WooSlider integration, integration with the WooThemes Testimonials plugin.

 


TheOnePager1

 

TheOnePager2

You can read more about the features of this theme here at: http://www.woothemes.com/products/the-one-pager/

An interesting story of how ecommerce increased the sales for a bike company

Tuesday, June 4th, 2013

James van Rooyen and Jonathon Allara are two Australian entrepreneurs who started a bike hire company that has become one of the seven top selling bike companies in Australia. Van Rooyen who had a job in marketing, and Allara who was an accountant found out about the power of ecommerce and how it can transform their business into a successful one.  They have started with a $16000 and setup Manly Bike Tours. Now, their company is selling over 5000 bikes a year, they have 13 staff, and makes a revenue of $3 million a year.

To read more about this article please click the following link: http://www.smh.com.au/small-business/growing/online-bike-venture-riding-high-20130527-2n695.html