New app hopes to re-direct Okanagan online shoppers to local stores

Online shopping has become popular in recent years and even more so during the coronavirus pandemic.

“It’s huge,” said Jim Belshaw, who owns Parrot Courier Services.

Belshaw has been delivering parcels in the Central Okanagan for Amazon for the past six months and has watched demand skyrocket.

“When I first started delivering for Amazon, we were doing about 1,500 parcels a day in our Central Okanagan,” Belshaw said. “Now we’re 6,000, 7,000, 8000 parcels.”

The bulk the purchased items, however, hails from out-of-province and out-of-country, leaving many local businesses struggling to compete for consumer dollars.

To help local businesses capitalize on the success of local shopping and survive the pandemic, a Kelowna man has created a new app and website called the SuperShopper.Club.

“Basically when you go to Google, you type in the search word. Let’s take masks as an example. It pulls up online stores like eBay, Amazon — no local store has a result on Google for masks, ” said JC Rathwell, the app’s creator.

“So I basically created SuperShopper.Club, which provides every local business with the opportunity to list every single product they have in a database on our website.”

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The app and website allow consumers to use a search engine to find items they are looking for locally.

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“Everybody is saying we need to shop local, we need to support the local economy. But no one knows how to do that,” Rathwell said.

“If you have a mask for sale, for example, how do you let people know in Kelowna that you have a mask for sale?”

Rathwell said there are already roughly 1,000 businesses across the Okanagan that advertise their products with SuperShopper.Club, and more are jumping on board every day.

“This is huge for any local business that needs to get traffic back into their store,” Rathwell said.

“Brick and mortar stores, they don’t have the ability to get their name and their product out to local people.”

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Rodney Warren owns Hypo-Guard, a Kelowna store that sells natural disinfectants and sanitizers.

He said marketing his products on the new app and website was a no-brainer.

“It’s been really tough on business, and when I was introduced to the Shoppers Club, I thought ‘What a home run,’ because a lot of people could really use something like this right now to really help spur the local economy,” Warren said.

Warren also said that with the pandemic prompting many to shop online, the timing of launching the new app couldn’t be better.

“I think the timing of what they’ve done is just ingenious,” he said.

Right now, businesses are paying $5 a month to be featured on the app and website.

Consumers will pay a delivery fee, which will vary depending on how far they live from the store they’re shopping at.

Click here to access the SuperShopper.Club website.