By
Emmet Purcell
“Necessity is the mother of invention,” Pat Horan tells me as he relays the journey to market for his bargain-hunting shipping service, ShopUSA.
There aren’t many Irish businessmen prone to quoting Plato off the cuff, but Pat is no ordinary Irish businessman. With ShopUSA he spotted a problem, found a solution and made it his business.
Like any ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’ venture, the concept of the site is simple and easily-relatable to Irish shoppers. Rather than flying to New York and Chicago and finding yourself at the behest of worrying and seemingly unquantifiable taxes on the way home, Pat’s business will do the shipping for you and even calculate the final cost from the tariff and VAT rate in advance.
The entire concept is fairly simple and completely transparent. Users register online and are given an individual suite number and ShopUSA address. Next, the shopper finds the item at any US online store as they normally would. This is where the magic happens.
“You go to the ShopUSA site and input the Dollar cost of your purchase into our calculator,” says Pat.
“We will then give you the complete Euro cost of your purchase delivered right to your door. This includes all applicable Irish tariff and VAT rates.
“The online shopper then knows the final price, so there are no surprises when the parcel arrives.”
If you’re happy with the final cost after the site's calculation, you can make your purchase and have it sent to your Suite Number at the ShopUSA address, where it is then shipped to Ireland and delivered to your door by An Post.
Problem-solving
So if it’s really that simple, why has it taken so long for someone to stumble upon the concept? We had to ask. For Pat, it was a case of fixing a problem that had started to bug him seemingly without end.
“I wanted to make a purchase in the US but couldn’t figure out what VAT, tariff or administrator fee that I’d have to pay the shipper.
“In the past, I would get a courier to ship back an item and get an unquantifiable bill land when it arrived. There has to be a better way of doing this, I thought. I started to research it and I found that it was quite complicated from the point of view of all of the tariff rates that were applicable.
“So in my research I found a company in Iceland that had already done it for the exact same reasons.
“I made an approach and asked, ‘Why don’t we come together and do it in Ireland?’ And that was last January but it’s now become an international franchise."
“If you can find a problem with something that annoys you and solve it, then potentially you’re solving it for everyone. And then there’s a business there.”
The ShopUSA itself is more than just a shipping service and at times could be forgiven for having customers believing that it doubles as a veritable travel guide. Considering the fact that the site is packed with information on the top stores and shopping malls in both New York and Chicago, it’s an apt comparison.
“We've a lot of marketing that we will march in September, for the run-up to Christmas, but one of the little phrases that we’re going to use is ‘Shopping on Fifth Avenue without the air fare’,” says Pat, who also informed JOE that the site’s chief interactivity is driven by social media.
Social media success
“Currently, we have 2,300 followers, over 600 Twitter followers and we blog two or three times every day. From our point of view, our marketing strategy will be regular updates on Facebook with bargains to be had and guest bloggers.
“Literally, our consumer market is as wide as consumers can go; it’s everything. Ultimately we’re just shipping, but we’re giving the consumer the transparency of knowing in advance that if they want to buy something in the US, then they’ll know the landed cost is at their door.
“It revolves at the moment around social media – finding new bargains and steering consumers towards our site. Ultimately our site is a shipping site, but we’ve got to grab customers towards buying and shipping with us. But the fun part for us is shopping. Not buying anything, but finding the bargains.
“It’s funny, Niall in marketing told me one day that he’d spent a morning looking at Victoria’s Secret, and in any other job that’d be a sackable offence!”
Indeed it would. While we in the JOE team are somewhat jealous of Niall's workplace exploits, we can’t also help but feel more than a twinge of admiration for someone who manages to turn shopper browsing into vital research.
As a perfect antidote to the horror stories which Irish shoppers have heard about trying to score a bargain or two in the past, however, it’s hard to argue that it’s time well spent.
“In this instance," Pat tells us as we conclude our chat, "you’re getting to shop in a vast shopping mall, where economies of scale make everything cheaper and you still pay your Irish taxes and still feel that you’ve a bargain at the end of it.”
For Irish bargain hunters, what's not to love about that?
If you’re looking for more information on ShopUSA Ireland, you can visit the official website or check out their Twitter or Facebook pages.
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