eCommerce
Do You Know Who Some of The Major Caribbean eCommerce Trailblazers Were?
As Caribbean Ecommerce grows and fast because of the pandemic and it has our attention, I want to let you know about some of the pioneers in this space who were doing amazing things 10, 15, and even 20 years ago. Yeah, you read that correctly.
Online Malls were a thing in 2005.
“In 2005 Debbie Chin with the assistance of her husband Stephen Chin opened RedPepperMall.com, to help promote and share the ‘Jamaican brand’ its amazing style and fabulous products, with the rest of the world.”
In 2006 RedPepperMall.com was accepted to become a part of the Caribbean’s first business incubation center, The Technology Innovation Center (TIC) at UTECH.
I wrote a little about RedPepperMall:
Online grocery shopping and delivery.
In 2008, My Elite Grocer (MEG) launched as a “lifestyle management solution for People On The Go, who would rather be someplace other than Standing-in-Line for Groceries.”
It was founded by Gale Peart, who was Ceo of MyEliteGrocer.com. In 2012, The shopping (Groceries & Gifts) arm of MEG has been sold.
Allyuh ever heard about TriniTuner?
The number one Trinidadian site visited by Trinidadians was trinituner.com for ages. It’s still Trinidad’s largest car site that mixes car classifieds and community for car lovers. It’s the story about three Trinidadian guys, who started out as web developers building website sites for others who loved cars and was part of the car culture and decided to start TRINITUNER.com-an online car classifieds site and community.
They started this in March 2000 as a hobby. That’s right 18 years ago now and it was white creating website for others that they build did a lot of the programming and interface design for the website. Their website “sees an average of 140,000 unique readers every day and has over 11 million page views each month.” (Google Analytics)
- In now almost 21 years of operation, they have developed an online community of over 100,000 registered members.
- Over 85% of their readers live in Trinidad and Tobago
The Caribbean’s First Largest eCommerce Business? Oh yeah!
TriniTrolley.com was launched in 2009 and became (the Caribbean’s largest e-Commerce business) by 2015. Founded by Mazuree Colin Ali, who is the company’s CEO. Trini Trolley boasts of being the first e-commerce platform in T&T.
With 20,000 items in its inventory, the site functions as a local “Amazon.com” where Trinbagonians can purchase from electronics to groceries, all with the click of a button. Most of the goods are stocked locally in warehouses in Princes Town and Freeport, which allows for delivery within 24 to 48 hours.
Jamaica’s eBay ? Best Believe that!
JamDeal was Jamaica’s #1 auction and classifieds site. Founded by Chad Cunningham, JamDeal.com positioned itself as Jamaica’s own version of eBay. An online auction marketplace that connects buyers and sellers from all across Jamaica. It also sprung two new sister sites –trindeal.com for Trinidad and dealwi.com for Barbados. Yes, it’s still online.