The Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment (DETE) has proposed a further call for Online Retail Scheme applications in response to the Covid-19 crisis and the continuing urgent need for retail companies to achieve a step change in online capability.
Sponsoring Agency: Enterprise Ireland
Type of Fund: Grant
Deadline Available: Available
Deadline Date (mm/dd/yyyy): 05/25/2021
Size of the Fund: Less than USD $50,000
The Department of Enterprise Trade and Employment (DETE) has proposed a further call for Online Retail Scheme applications in response to the Covid-19 crisis and the continuing urgent need for retail companies to achieve a step change in online capability.
This is a Competitive Fund which will be administered by Enterprise Ireland on behalf of DBEI with a total fund size of €5m.
The purpose of this fund is to enable Irish-owned retailers to enhance their digital capability and to develop a more competitive online offer that will enable an increase in their customer base and build a more resilient business in the domestic and global marketplace, both online and offline.
Funding Information
Successful applicants will be awarded funding to support a maximum of 80% of the project eligible costs with a maximum grant of €40,000.
Eligibility Criteria
The applicant must be an Irish-owned retail enterprise that had 10 or more full-time employees and has the potential to sustain or create jobs, generate growth in online transactions and with an ambition to internationalise their business in future. An application must be submitted in the name of a company registered with the Companies Registration Office and incorporated in the Republic of Ireland at the time of application. The business must also:
• have an existing online presence (e.g. website or social media)
• have a retail store on or before 29 February 2020 and derive the majority of company revenue from retailing products directly to individual consumers:
o Where a company provides both products and services, the applicant must provide a breakdown of sales revenue showing that products account for more than 50% of total revenue for a recent trading period, which may be up to the call close date
o Where a company has a mixture of business-to-consumer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) operations, the applicant must provide a breakdown of sales revenue showing that sales from B2C activities account for more than 50% of total revenue for a recent trading period, which may be up to the call close date
• employ at least 10 employees in the Republic of Ireland on a full-time equivalent basis on or before 29 February 2020 or has grown to that level since then
• previous applicants of the Online Retail Scheme who were unsuccessful will be eligible to re-apply with a modified proposal under this call
• a company/group may receive a maximum of two Online Retail Scheme approvals in a three year period. Successful applicants in previous calls are eligible to re-apply under this call, once they have fully completed the project previously approved, fully claimed all eligible costs before this call close date and propose a clearly different project to that undertaken under previous calls. This completion criteria also applies where related companies within a group structure wish to make an application.
More information at: https://www.enterprise-ireland.com/en/funding-supports/Online-Retail/Online-Retail-Scheme/
