izest start was established as a direct response to the pandemic. The izest marketing team saw what was happening to small businesses across every industry in Ireland and wanted to create an entry level service offering designed specifically for SMEs and start-ups. Retail businesses all around the country were forced to ditch their traditional business plans and move everything online. Some businesses were well equipped for this but for the majority of businesses who had never implemented a digital strategy or even an e-commerce website, this was an extremely challenging time.
Enterprise Ireland offered a Covid-19 online retail scheme in Phase 1 and Phase 2 of the pandemic to enable retail businesses in the industry to make the move online. It was recently announced that they will be offering this online retail scheme to certain retailers for the third time. This competitive fund has a total value of €5m and will be distributed by Enterprise Ireland on behalf of DBEI. izest start has worked with several small businesses over the past year who have received online retail grants and the results have truly been outstanding.