Rapheal John-Lall

The on­line ship­ping Web site Trini­Trol­ley is now launch­ing cell phone charg­ing kiosks around the coun­try and while these are free for cus­tomers, it al­so en­cour­ages busi­ness own­ers to ad­ver­tise those us­ing these kiosks, ac­cord­ing to the CEO of the e-com­merce site, Mazuree Ali.

"This is a unique mar­ket­ing tool that has the po­ten­tial to reach a large cap­tive au­di­ence. I am al­ways look­ing for in­no­v­a­tive ways to ad­ver­tise es­pe­cial­ly be­ing an on­line busi­ness. I asked my­self how do I cap­ture tourists at the air­port which is the most ex­pen­sive form of ad­ver­tis­ing? Al­so, I can have the kiosks in ho­tels to cap­ture clien­tele and tar­get mar­kets that have tourists in ho­tels.

"Al­so, how do we tar­get stu­dents, the next work­ing class with in­comes? At the same time, the uni­ver­si­ties need charg­ing ports for stu­dents for their phones and tablets. How do you tar­get cus­tomers in malls? You can­not do this un­less you have a store there. With these kiosks, you can now ad­ver­tise in these places," the 34-year-old Ali told the Guardian last Fri­day.

Fresh Plug Kiosks are in­no­v­a­tive, se­cure and ver­sa­tile uni­ver­sal charg­ing sta­tions for mo­bile phones and tablets and are free of charge for cus­tomers.

The Web site is www.fresh­plugkiosks.com.

These kiosks are in sev­en lo­ca­tions now which in­clude the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre, Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), Long Cir­cu­lar Mall Gym, Caribbean Cin­e­mas in Trinci­ty, Caribbean Cin­e­mas in South Park and Movi­eTowne in In­vaders Bay.

Next month, the kiosks will be launched at the wa­ter-taxi ter­mi­nals in Port-of-Spain and San Fer­nan­do, the Trinci­ty Mall, Long Cir­cu­lar Mall, Chuck E Cheese's and oth­er restau­rants and gyms.

Ad­ver­tis­ers pay, free for cus­tomers

Ali said peo­ple wish­ing to use the kiosks do not have to pay a dol­lar for the ser­vice.

"Peo­ple have the lux­u­ry of free charg­ing and se­cure as well. Peo­ple can leave their phones charg­ing and go shop in the malls and can go to class­es and af­ter re­trieve their phones. They charge all the ma­jor brands and 90 per cent of all cell­phones. There are six charg­ing lock­ers in each kiosk and in­te­grat­ed key­pads which helps you in­put your se­cret pass­word to open the door to put in the phones."

The e-com­merce com­pa­ny of­fi­cial­ly launched the kiosks in March, in­stalling and test­ing them at the Hilton Trinidad and Con­fer­ence Cen­tre in St Ann's and the Long Cir­cu­lar Mall gym as ear­ly as Car­ni­val.

"They had the traf­fic of a lot of peo­ple com­ing for Car­ni­val and they want­ed to utilise that. From then to now we had about 19,000 peo­ple use the kiosks."

He de­vel­oped the idea be­cause, as an on­line busi­ness­man, he is al­ways on the phone and con­stant­ly needs to charge it.

"I trav­el a lot and need to be con­nect­ed with my phones and tablets. I found that go­ing out to lo­ca­tions and hav­ing meet­ings at restau­rants and ho­tels that this was a prob­lem, not be­ing able to send e-mails for im­por­tant busi­ness meet­ings. How­ev­er, I no­ticed in the first world coun­tries this was preva­lent. So I re­alised that we need­ed charg­ing fa­cil­i­ties in pub­lic ar­eas."

He said busi­ness­es can use a num­ber of ways to ad­ver­tise us­ing these kiosks.

"They can ad­ver­tise on the 19-inch touch screens which play in­ter­ac­tive videos and they al­so do still ads. Po­ten­tial ad­ver­tis­ers can al­so wrap the kiosks as well so you can brand the kiosks. In two weeks, we will al­so be launch­ing free wi fi in all these lo­ca­tions and busi­ness­es can ad­ver­tise on the net­work as well. We al­so have re­ports we could pro­vide to ad­ver­tis­ers say­ing how many peo­ple are us­ing the ma­chines and when and oth­er in­for­ma­tion," he said.

Ac­cord­ing to Ali, for peo­ple want­i­ng to use the kiosks to ad­ver­tise, the cost is $1,000 month­ly. He com­pared it to ad­ver­tis­ing at a movie the­atre, which he said could be any­where from $14,000 to $22,000 a month.

"You can­not ad­ver­tise in the mall, un­less you own a store there. You can­not ad­ver­tise at the Hilton but now you have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ad­ver­tise and cap­ture your mar­ket. Busi­ness­es ad­ver­tis­ing will be on our Web site as well and the app, so this in­creas­es your busi­ness' vis­i­bil­i­ty on­line high­light­ing your ser­vices. You get to de­cide where and when you wish to tar­get your cus­tomers."

He said there is an app that is avail­able and a Web site to help peo­ple find the kiosks which will be grow­ing in num­bers over the next few months across the coun­try.

"So you can find your lo­ca­tion and nav­i­gate to the clos­est Fresh Plug Kiosk. If some­one is in Movi­eTowne the app no­ti­fies the per­son where the clos­est kiosk is."

He fore­sees the cor­po­rate world want­i­ng to use these kiosks at their work­places.

"We al­ready have had a cou­ple com­pa­nies and cor­po­rate cus­tomers ap­proach­ing us and ask­ing us to put it in their work­places and busi­ness­es and we told them yes. It is pos­si­ble we will have spe­cial pack­ages for them. But right now our pri­or­i­ty is get­ting them in the main pub­lic places."

On­line shop­ping

Ali said Trini­Trol­ley is the num­ber one lo­cal on­line shop­ping Web site in T&T and the Caribbean with con­ve­nient 48-hour de­liv­ery.

The com­pa­ny was launched in 2009 to pro­vide res­i­dents of T&T with a wide range of prod­ucts that can be pur­chased through an on­line shop­ping Web site with con­ve­nient 24- to 48-hour de­liv­ery in­stead of us­ing tra­di­tion­al "sky box" com­pa­nies for on­line shop­ping in the Unit­ed States. By 2011, the com­pa­ny ex­pand­ed to in­clude de­liv­ery to the rest of the Caribbean and world.

"You can buy any­thing from gro­ceries to books to elec­tron­ics to clothes. We al­so al­low oth­er busi­ness­es to sell on­line through our Web site. It is done for free and on­ly when some­thing is sold we take a per­cent­age."

He is hop­ing to ex­pand across the Caribbean in the fu­ture.

"We hope to launch an of­fice and ware­house in Bar­ba­dos by the end of the year. There are a lot tourists who vis­it there. The in­ten­tion is to ex­pand to the oth­er is­lands in the fu­ture."

He said on­line shop­ping is "killing" tra­di­tion­al busi­ness­es be­cause it is cheap and con­ve­nient.

"Our prices are bet­ter than stores and you have it de­liv­ered to you the cus­tomer. Now there is more ac­cess to cred­it card fa­cil­i­ties. Al­so, with Trini­Trol­ley a cus­tomer can pay on de­liv­ery with Linx or cash. So if peo­ple do not have a cred­it card they can still shop with us."

Ali said Trini­Trol­ley is ac­tu­al­ly con­sid­ered to be the "lo­cal Ama­zon."

"Our busi­ness mod­el is the same as theirs so all items on our Web site are in stock by us and in T&T with de­liv­ery with­in 48 hours. We com­pete against Ama­zon. The chal­lenge is to con­trol e-com­merce in T&T and the Caribbean. We shouldn't have to re­ly on Ama­zon and pay the cost of ship­ping and du­ties from the US.

"We al­so have a ser­vice called 'trini­trol­ley shops for me' where we can or­der and bring in things for you that we do not have on our site. So if you see some­thing on Ama­zon, Wal­mart or an­oth­er site, we will give you one fi­nal cost for the item up­front."