An Austrian entrepreneur is setting up a website that amalgamates various tools to help retailers, from acting as a directory, to special offers and discount schemes.

MyCard.com.mt took six months to create and is currently signing up its first companies.

Michael Khoss-Sternegg, the man behind this initiative, has long experience in this field.

His company MKS Timeless, set up by his father in 1956, represents brands like Timex, Vespa and Leatherman and with a small team in Vienna handles 50,000 orders every year, from invoice to dispatch.

“I came to Malta planning to just live here but I was drawn into the idea of doing something more and realised that my company model could work well here. Retailers do not realise how effective good marketing can be to bring customers into their shops. This is the only way that they can compete with growing online sales,” he said.

There are a number of online business-to-business directories, but MyCard.com will be aimed at business-to-customer, and rather than encouraging online sales, it will use a combination of marketing techniques to encourage them to go in person to the shop, including a form of loyalty card.

The annual fee has been set at €150 – with “no hidden costs”, he promised. Shops will even be able to update their own adverts and offers, through open sources software, to make the site as dynamic as possible.

www.mycard.com.mt