• silicon.com
• Technology
• Networks

By silicon.com, 10 September 2003 16:04

NEWS 10.09.98: Frozen food chain Iceland is giving internet shopping the cold shoulder, at least for the present. The UK retailer said it has no plans to make a web-based service part of its home shopping strategy. Iceland's home shopping service lets customers phone or fax orders to a call centre in Deeside, North Wales. Call centre staff then add £4 to the bill and pass on the orders to neighbourhood stores, who deliver the items. According to John Sharman, home shopping business development manager for Iceland, the scheme has been very successful. But he remains unconvinced about the immediate value of ebusiness for his company. "Four per cent of households have an internet connection, but 99 per cent have access to a phone. You don't have to be an accountant to work out where the money is," he said. 10.09.03: Mum may have 'gone to Iceland' but it appears no-one with an ounce of innovation in their bones joined her at the retail chain. It's this kind of thinking which if left unchallenged would have us still living in wattle-and-daub accommodation. Fair enough, the problems of the internet became well documented by 2001, but to turn your back on the internet as early as 1998 is at best short-sighted, at worst reckless. It wouldn't be easy convincing shoppers to make the switch online and Iceland isn't typical of the supermarkets which would have appealed to the clued up web-savvy shopper of four-to-five years ago, but writing it off as a bad investment so early revealed a remarkable lack of ambition. The internet may have been the preserve of the Guardian-reading Sainsbury's shopper back in 1998-2000, but Iceland's time would have come as more and more homes came online. There was probably a time, when the internet was a dirty word, that Iceland's execs sat back with smug 'we told you so' looks on their faces, but since then they must surely have had a rethink...and indeed they have, because now Iceland is among the ranks of supermarkets offering online shopping and home delivery. In fact it now markets itself as Iceland.co.uk. What a difference five years, and the success of your more proactive, innovative rivals, can make.