Speech by Micheál Martin T.D.
Posted 25th Apr, 2007
It gives me great pleasure to be here today, in Cork especially, to open NitroSell’s European Headquarters. This company’s stated goal is to become a major player in the global Internet business, and today is a time to celebrate with NitroSell an early, but important milestone on this journey.NitroSell has already achieved considerable success in quickly establishing itself in the Global market to sell WebStores to small and medium sized Global Retailers, who number in the millions. NitroSell’s business model is “low cost, high volume” and while this is particularly challenging in terms of how polished and highly engineered its products and services must be, success in this arena will bring huge rewards and employment to Ireland.
To think that NitroSell solutions are selling so successfully, is an example of extreme globalization and just the type of “knowledge economy” activity that the Irish government wants to encourage and promote. This type of business puts Ireland at the heart of the global changes that are already beginning to radically alter our world.
I am pleased to announce today that NitroSell has committed to business expansion plans which will see the number of jobs rise to a least 66 over the next three to four years. That means around 50 new, high value jobs will be created in this time frame – and there are job opening right now!
I have no doubt NitroSell will achieve, and indeed probably exceed, these targets. I see a lot of startup companies, but rarely have I come across a company as passionate and as committed as the NitroSell team. Their mission literally is to turn the internet on its head and to change the face of shopping as we know it. We all are aware of the massive upsurge in eCommerce. But how many times have you shopped with your local retailer? NitroSell’s vision is to change this – to give the local retailers the tools and systems the big guys use, but at an affordable price. Right now NitroSell is delivering uniquely integrated WebStores that are quick to install, and rank among the most integrated, fastest, resilient, and secure available on the Internet today. You and I, as consumers will be able to check if our local store has something in-stock, before we get in the car or or course, order it online for later delivery.
What I find most intriguing about NitroSell is the clever way they are using the latest trends and convergences in the software business such as Software-as-a-Service, Web 2.0 and the like, to give ordinary retailers the tools to survive and thrive in a connected world. And they make it really easy and affordable for retailers to do this by cleverly hiding the complexity.
What impressed me most was when Tom explained that the sophistication and complexity of the NitroSell solution is entirely hidden from the end-user retailers, whose experience is a quick to install, highly customizable, easy to operate business system with zero downtime. What NitroSell is doing will help small, passionate retailers to stay in business. Something that will make the shopping experience for all us more interesting and diverse. Indeed it will help keep retailers viable in the smaller towns and villages – something I certainly support and encourage!
NitroSell has correctly identified that the future of Retail is all about multi-channel and maximizing the advantage of one or more physical presences in the local community to beat the threat from the mega online players. With retail margins ever tightening and competition growing ever fiercer, smart retailers know that better customer service is the key to surviving and thriving, and in today’s fast-paced world, customers expect online service as well as just in-store service.
There is no doubt that in terms of its world-class technical competence and the prevailing global macro-trends NitroSell has positioned itself to be in the right place at the right time. By far the most important partnership NitroSell has put in place is with Microsoft. I was fascinated to hear about the challenges companies like NitroSell face in successfully working with a company as large and complex as Microsoft. Enterprise Ireland has a specific initiative in this area and again it was great to see NitroSell successfully leveraging these services to the maximum. NitroSell’s partnership with Microsoft is growing all the time: NitroSell has won praise and awards from Microsoft. Tom was recently appointed to Microsoft’s prestigious “Live” Partner Advisory Council. He travels to Redmond every few months, to be part of a distinguished panel of partner companies that literally advises Microsoft on how to transition its traditional software business model to a one more closely aligned with principles of Software-as-a-Service, which is set to transform the software business as we know it.
In conclusion I have no doubt that NitroSell will continue to grow and go on to be a major player in eCommerce and in the Internet sector in general. Also I look forward opening NitroSell offices in every major global market.