Feature -- by Tom Babin

The wheels of the shopping cart don't wobble, there are no crowds to fight and product can be bought from home. Nothing, however, can be tried on before being purchased, selections must be made based on small, pixelated images and product is delivered through the mail. This is the world of online retail, a new, exciting, but still rather clumsy, way of selling products over the Internet. Despite the problems that continue to burden the industry, however, online retail is slowly taking off in Canada, changing retail careers in ways never seen before.

"(Online retail) used to be geeks selling to geeks, but it's expanding into a more traditional market," said Michael LeBlanc, the senior manager of interactive retailing with The Bay in Toronto. "It's not just the domain of the rich, and it's not just the domain of men anymore." Those who will benefit most from this change in retail careers are not necessarily those with computing skills, but those who can transfer their traditional retailing and marketing skills onto the World Wide Web.

"I strongly believe that you still have to be very personable," said Greg Solecki of Proem Multimedia Ltd., an Internet marketing company that maintains websites for a number of online retailers including Irene Besse Keyboards and the Calgary Cybermall. "We may not have the best designers, programmers, products, etc., but we are able to meet and talk to potential clients in a professional manner, and this brings us a lot of business through word of mouth." The qualities that make a retailer successful in a traditional market do so also online. "I run the whole division and I don't have any computer skills," LeBlanc said. "It is 10 per cent Internet, 90 per cent retail marketing. You may know technology, but do you know business?"

Customer service is also an important part of online retailing, and may be the place where most jobs emerge in the future. For many, shopping with a computer is a new experience, and many people are still afraid of having their credit card numbers stolen, so support is needed before people become confident enough to shop regularly online. Online customer support may be anything from offering shopping advice to walking people through their first transaction, but the qualities that make up the field are the same as more traditional markets. Being knowledgable, friendly and helpful is essential in retail, no matter the market or medium.

Though people and retail marketing skills remain the most important attributes of retailers online, the Web poses some unique problems, and those who help solve these problems may have the most success in the future. "Our biggest obstacles were trying to attract the Canadian market," said Nick Nicolopoulos of Western Ranch Bootmakers, a company that sells Western footwear over the Internet. "As fellow Canadians, we would have loved to work here at home, but I have to admit, the U.S. Is where it's at." The number of online shoppers in the United States dwarfs the number in Canada, so Canadian retailers are often forced to cater to their southern neighbours in order to survive. "Canadians are about 18 months behind Americans in terms of shopping online," LeBlanc said. "The next 18 months are critical to get online (in Canada)." Finding ways to get Canadians to shop online may be the biggest hurdle wired companies face in Canada, but finding a solution to that problem promises opportunity in the future.

Analysts predict by 2003, online shopping will account for 6 per cent of all retail, a number that seems small, but translates into a multi-million dollar segment of the industry. The Internet is still growing and changing, and has yet to establish itself as a regular part of many Canadians lives, but as it becomes accepted, more Canadians will become comfortable shopping online. Today, online retail has changed more jobs than it has created, but as the numbers of online shoppers increases, so will the number of career opportunities catering to them.