Irish SMEs are Europe's biggest cross-border online traders

The European Commission’s Digital Economy and Society Index (DESI) has revealed that Irish small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are leading the way in Europe when it comes to selling online and cross-border trading.

The latest figures from the DESI also showed that Irish SMEs are among Europe’s leading users of social media to help improve their business sales.

However, Patricia Callan, head of the Small Firms Association (SFA), said that despite an uptake in online sales, many SMEs aren’t tapping into other lucrative global markets as they don’t wish to “waste the shoe leather getting on a plane”.

Ms Callan believes that a clutch of Irish small business owners are happy to reach a certain level of income and lack the desire to push themselves further.

“The vast majority of employment is in family businesses that might be five, 10, 20, 30 [staff] and they reach a certain size and they are running businesses, and would describe themselves as owner-managers as opposed to entrepreneurs per se,” said Callan.

“They’re not ambitious in terms of trying to internationalise, and where they are internationalising the easy route has been to go north or go into the UK.”

Ms Callan said that roughly one in every 2,000 Irish businesses are formed with ambitions to operate on a global scale. Callan added that the SFA had been doing what it can to foster procurement channels between multinationals and SMEs.

“What I’ve heard back from multinationals is that Irish businesses don’t want to grow in scale because people don’t want to waste the shoe leather getting on a plane,” added Callan.

“When we built the likes of Glen Dimplex and those, you had guys who were on planes 200 days a year and nobody wants to do that anymore. So you reach x level of income, you’re happy with that.”

The EU’s data found that the country has one of the lowest rates of basic digital literacy among the rest of the population, with the availability of broadband and its take-up still lagging below the EU average.

However, online shopping is enjoying a surge despite Ireland’s relatively poor broadband access, with almost three-quarters of Irish internet users shopping online – up from 63 per cent in 2015.

Date published 6 Mar 2017 | Last updated 6 Mar 2017