Owning five online stores isn't enough for Tauranga businessman Shane Loomb - he wants to sell the engines that power other people's online stores.
Mr Loomb is managing director of LeftBrain, a group of online stores including IQ Toys, Baby Universe, Gumboot, I Want That, and as of November last year, Pet Spot.
LeftBrain has a turnover of close to $6 million a year but Mr Loomb hopes that can grow to $25 million within the next five years.
The growth would include the purchase or development of more online stores for the LeftBrain group but would be driven by the sale of systems services for other online retailers, Mr Loomb said.
The company launched a beta version of its e-commerce software two months ago and was already hosting Tauranga company Fitness Fusion. LeftBrain was working with several other companies keen to use its online retail software.
The cloud-based software would allow online retailers to easily upload products, create deals and monitor visitor and sales numbers for as little as $10 a month.
Retailers with more products would pay more for the service - up to $100 a month for a site with thousands of products.
Mr Loomb said the online market was a big place and he was not afraid to sell the systems that had helped his business.
"We've been a gold miner, we understand how to gold mine so we're training up new gold miners, and provided they're not operating in our same patch it's not really a problem," he said.
"Why not look at it as a way to build the business, in fact if anything it will grow the business quicker than if we just continued adding a new website every couple of years."
In addition to selling its online expertise, LeftBrain was also offering to provide distribution services for online retail companies.
"Ultimately what we want to do is offer people the ability to focus on what matters to their business, which is really just sourcing new products and getting new customers, and we'll focus on the back-end stuff."
LeftBrain had maximised its warehouse capacity but would be looking for bigger premises if growth levels continued, he said.
Seventy-five per cent of LeftBrain products were sold in New Zealand, although Australia could become a bigger part of the company's market so long as tax laws did not change.
Mr Loomb said he was in two minds about Government plans to look for ways to charge GST on goods bought on foreign websites.
"We export to Australia quite a bit so if Australia brings in a similar thing it could be an issue for us, but the other thing is that as a New Zealand retailer it's going to make it not so attractive for people to go on to Amazon and buy from them so it will help strengthen us within the local market."