Flowers, food and regional centres helping to drive ecommerce boom

Rose Powell
August 26, 2014
The Age

Melbourne may be Australia’s destination shopping city, but the bricks and mortar stores everywhere may want to get online quickly with a new report showing Melburnians buy more online than any other city, followed by Sydney and Toowoomba.
Richmond in Victoria, Cairns, Werribee in Victoria, Brisbane as well as NSW’s Liverpool and Baulkham Hills were the other leading postcodes when it came to purchasing online.
The list comes from first Online Retail Report produced by eWay, a payment software company that processes one in five online transactions in Australia.
Not only were there some unexpected regional purchasing powerhouses driving the shift from in-store to online shopping, the report also revealed the Australians were spending an average of $162 each time through the check out, up $10 from last year.
The beneficiaries of this online boom were mostly local industries such as floristry, which experienced year on year sales growth of 253 per cent, and catering, with 252 per cent.
EWay founder and chief executive Matt Bullock told Fairfax Media his team was surprised when the numbers came in.
“Who knew floristry and catering were doing so well online? It shows what we always suspected, there may be a lot of talk about money going overseas but there is even more money moving around internally,” Mr Bullock said.
Research by the National Australia Bank earlier this year that found local businesses fielded 74 per cent of purchases made online by Australians. It also revealed online shopping had grown by 10 per cent in 2013 up to $14.9 billion in purchases.
Paul Greenberg, the executive chairman of the federal government’s National Online Retailers Australia association, told Fairfax Media the new data was a victory.
“As an industry, we need to keep Australians shopping locally by offering choice. The fact there are regional pockets like Toowoomba in the leaders show the retail industry is finally responding really well by offering customers wherever they are in Australia more choice and convenience,” he said.
Other industries growing welcoming an influx of cash online were sporting goods (212 per cent), books (166 per cent) and sports and recreational camps (119 per cent) were the leading growth industries for online purchases.
Mr Greenberg said the next step for companies will be to take the strong local offerings to overseas clients.
“I’m a big fan of physical retail, and the honey pot and sweet spot is that intersection between established retailers and online, so why stop at Toowoomba?”
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