Ferrit unspectacular in its debut

Overseas trends show Ferrit's timing may be right. Picture / Glen Jeffrey

For an internet start-up with the hefty financial backing of Telecom, it's been a fairly unspectacular debut.

Online retailer Ferrit.co.nz seems to have won more publicity for paying off the owners of the web domain Ferrit.com, which hosted pornography, than it has for its new online shopping service. Kiwi web surfers have paid relatively slight attention to the site's arrival.

According to data from web monitor Nielsen//NetRatings, through most of January daily unique visits to Ferrit have been floating between 2000 and 3000.

That's a lot of eyeballs but consider this: on January 19, a fairly ordinary day in the world of e-commerce, Ferrit, the new kid on the block, attracted 2500 unique visitors; well-established online auction site Trade Me attracted 284,000.

"We all use Trade Me," says Peter Wogan, the marketing head of the Ferrit team that was formed last July and given $15 million to kick Telecom into e-tailing.

Wogan mentions Trade Me among a handful of New Zealand sites he respects and doesn't want to go up against. While visitors are crucial to Ferrit's business model, he says website traffic rankings come third in its measures of success.

Still, he has a target in mind for visitor numbers, wanting 250,000 to 300,000 unique visits to the site by mid-year, with plenty of repeat visitors.

"If we do that, we'll have built a good sustainable business," he says.

The goals in phase one of Ferrit's life are modest, with expanding the number of retailers and products searchable on the site as the main priority. So far 170 merchants have joined Ferrit and 300 more have expressed interest, Wogan says.

Sales queries are automatically referred to a retailer's website, but by the middle of the year, the start of phase two, purchases will be made through Ferrit directly making it a real e-commerce operator.

Overseas trends show Ferrit's timing may be right, with 2005 being a watershed year for online sales. In Britain, 24 million consumers spent £5 billion ($13 billion) online in the 10 weeks before Christmas.

In the more mature US market, people bought online in record numbers. Between November 1 and December 21 online retail sales reached $US17 billion, up 24 per cent from a year earlier.

But are New Zealanders as ready to shop online?

"The need and desire is there," says Wogan. "Kiwis who have been travelling and seen shopping online overseas - they're frustrated that the experience isn't available here."