9 April 2021
By Mary Bermingham
mary@TheCork.ie
Amazon Bootcamp Ireland is a free, 2-day virtual event on April 13-14 designed to help hundreds of Cork’s small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) grow revenues, enhance productivity and develop digital skills
Amazon, Enterprise Ireland and Enterprise Nation are calling on SMEs and entrepreneurs in Cork to sign up for the first-ever Amazon Bootcamp Ireland, an online event on Tuesday 13 – Wednesday 14 April providing free training and guidance to help businesses increase their online sales and reach new customers. The free event is part of the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, a programme to support more than 200,000 entrepreneurs across the UK and Ireland.
The event will include practical sessions for businesses in Cork on how to sell products on the Amazon stores, scale operations, master social media, secure funding and more. Tickets are free but attendees need to register in advance via this EventBrite link.
Pictured: Pamela Laird, Brand Creator & Founder Moxi Loves. Photo: Michael Donnelly.
Amazon Bootcamp Ireland has been created in partnership with Enterprise Ireland, Enterprise Nation, and the Local Enterprise Office. The virtual event will feature interviews, panel discussions and interactive presentation sessions with Amazon experts who will provide hands-on, practical advice of how to sell on Amazon, together with Irish industry leaders such as Pamela Laird, former contestant on The Apprentice, who is now a successful Amazon entrepreneur with her brand Moxi Loves.
The two-day event follows the successful Amazon Academy Ireland, which took place in November 2020, where hundreds of attendees learned how to grow revenues, enhance productivity and develop digital skills. More than 4,500 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) have now joined Amazon Academy events across the UK and Ireland to scale their businesses.
Amazon Bootcamp Ireland comes as recent research[1] from Enterprise Ireland revealed that 9 in 10 Irish exporters to the UK see future opportunities in the UK market, with 4 in 5 businesses (83%) saying their strategy is to grow exports to the UK, topics which the bootcamp will cover. The event is part of the Amazon Small Business Accelerator, a major support package for 200,000 small businesses and start-ups which provides free online training and access to business advice, developed in partnership with Enterprise Nation, a leading small business support network.
“Amazon is proud to work with Enterprise Ireland to offer free training and advice to small and medium-sized businesses in Cork which we hope will help them grow and prosper in 2021,” said Simon Donegan, Head of Seller Services, Amazon. “More than half of all products sold on Amazon stores come from independent selling partners, most of which are SMEs. We also have a long track record of supporting Irish entrepreneurs and small businesses, most recently with the Amazon Academy Ireland event. Many businesses have found their way through the crisis by providing goods and services online. Through this bootcamp we will be providing hundreds of offline and online businesses with the skills, tools and support they need to succeed in the digital world, to reach customers through Amazon or any other service.”
“I believe Amazon offers a huge opportunity for small and medium sized businesses in Cork to grow and I’m looking forward to taking part in the Bootcamp to help get more businesses online,” said Pamela Laird, founder of Moxi Loves. “By listing products on Amazon, SMEs have access and reach to an entirely new customer base. It can be costly to acquire a new customer online, especially if you are new to e-commerce, but Amazon provides a simple and cost-effective opportunity for your products to go global!”
Julie Sinnamon, CEO of Enterprise Ireland:
“It’s great to partner with Amazon following our successful event for small businesses last year. Amazon Bootcamp Ireland will build on the strong foundations laid at the Amazon Academy, helping hundreds more companies to take their businesses online. I’m excited to welcome lots of new faces to our virtual event in April.”
Padraic McElwee, Chair of the network of Local Enterprise Offices:
“Selling online has become a key component for Irish small businesses and we saw the difference that made in 2020 when we approved over 13,000 Trading Online Vouchers as traditional businesses pivoted to online. As the Local Enterprise Offices are the first stop shop for start-ups and small businesses in Ireland, it is great to partner with Amazon on this event that will give small companies even greater resources and knowledge on how to build their online skills.”
Emma Jones CBE, Head of Enterprise Nation:
“We’re looking forward to returning to Ireland with another fantastic Amazon event, with the aim of helping more small businesses to prepare for growth by embracing e-commerce. Attendees will get an understanding of how to get their businesses online from industry leading experts over the two-day event and we can’t wait to be a part of it.”
In 2020, Amazon announced it was creating another 1,000 permanent jobs in Ireland over the next two years. The new, highly-skilled roles will be based in locations across the company’s Cork and Dublin sites in Blanchardstown, Tallaght, the City Centre, and north County Dublin, and will bring Amazon’s total permanent workforce in the country to 5,000 people over the next two years. This will help to support Ireland’s economic recovery following the COVID-19 pandemic.
For over 16 years, Amazon has been investing and growing in Ireland. The company launched its first cloud infrastructure region outside of the US in Ireland in 2007, and since this time, has grown the number of staff, expanded its collaboration with colleges and universities, invested in skills programmes, and strengthened its relationships with local communities across the country. Amazon, through Amazon Web Services (AWS), maintains the world’s most comprehensive and broadly adopted cloud platform. Millions of customers – including the fastest-growing start-ups, largest enterprises, and leading government agencies – are using AWS to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster.
