Toronto, Ontario – November 2nd, 2020 – NEAR Technology Group announces its first major expansion of services with new platform support for small and medium-sized retailers in Canada and the United States.
“This is an exciting step towards our goal of restoring brick and mortar retailers to being the first choice for consumers shopping online,” said Matthew Smith, co-founder of the Canadian start-up. “We’re passionate about making it easier for shoppers to support local businesses, and making it easier for those same businesses to compete against e-commerce giants like Amazon.”
The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic near the end of the first quarter hastened the trend by consumers towards spending more online. Though many retailers made heroic efforts to quickly build their own e-commerce presence, this shift ultimately benefited the largest internet retailers, each of which has notched up double-digit growth in 2020.
“The success of these e-commerce sites has come at the expense of retailers who have long been employers, tax payers and good corporate citizens in our communities. By comparison, most of these e-commerce companies have contributed very little to the cities and towns they’re mining for wealth.” Smith concludes.
NEAR Technology Group produces tools that alert online shoppers when the products they’re browsing are available from a local source. The software combines pricing and inventory information to help consumers make confident purchasing decisions when comparing online retailers with their brick and mortar counterparts. NEAR’s high-precision advertising tools for retailers help them connect to shoppers who are searching for exactly the products they sell, instead of broad campaigns with poor returns on advertising investment. The latest version of NEAR’s tools help retailers reach online shoppers – even when traditional internet advertising can’t.
Shoppers and retailers alike can learn more about NEAR by visiting https://near.shop/.