Erinvale moves online to clean up overseas business

Dungannon-based Erinvale Natural Skincare Products is to reach a wider market by harnessing the latest e-business technology.

Following advice from Invest Northern Ireland, orders for the company's range of handmade soap products - goats' milk soaps and moisturisers, handmade on the family farm - are being increasingly taken via the company's Internet site.

Formed in 1999 by businesswoman Elizabeth Smith, Erinvale, which currently employs three people, has been assisted by Invest NI's Western Local Office in Omagh. The company moved into e-commerce at the start of the year, a decision influenced by participation in Invest NI Marketing Awareness and Impact workshops that help smaller companies to increase marketing capability.

Mrs Smith, Erinvale’s Managing Director, said: "The Invest NI Impact workshops were extremely useful because they provided a lot of very practical marketing information in a format that suited my business. Everything was covered in a one-day session which meant I wasn't away from the company for too long."

Advice on the development of the website was provided under Invest NI's ICT Advisor scheme with the Rural Development Council providing the funding to design the website.

Elizabeth added that the investment in the website was beginning to pay off.

She said: "The website is a tremendous shop window. It is enabling us to reach a wider audience than the country markets, health shops and small chemists that are currently our main outlets. Of course, it was a big investment for a company of our size with niche products in a price conscious marketplace dominated by volume producers and supermarkets but we had to make the leap to grow the business. We now sell in countries like New Mexico, USA, Singapore, Germany as well as Scotland, England, and Ireland."

Invest NI client executive at the Western Local Office in Omagh, Angela Hughes, said: "This is a go-ahead company which has harnessed IT enthusiastically to optimise its limited resources and expand its marketplace.

“The company has also used the portfolio of assistance and expert services readily available from the Invest NI through the Omagh office very effectively to develop the business and most recently to reposition it as an e-commerce operation."

(SP)