A giant US online retailer now allows Australian customers to purchase computing products, potentially undercutting local prices for anything from tablets computers to monitors.
Electronics e-tailer Newegg announced this week a pilot that makes "several thousand products" available for Australian and United Kingdom customers.
"Although the initial selection of products available in the UK and Australia represents only a small subset of the Newegg catalogue, we’ll be greatly increasing the selection in the coming months," said Soren Mills, chief marketing officer for Newegg North America.
"This is an important step forward for our company and we’re taking a very deliberate approach to our international growth."
The company is not operating in Australia physically for now, but will be watching the international pilot from its US base.
Newegg has a reputation in the US as a discount outlet. CRN compared some prices for delivery to the Sydney CBD:
- Apple iPad mini 128GB Wi-Fi grey:
- $800.71 delivered from Newegg; $799 pick up only at Harvey Norman
- Acer V226HQLAbmdp 21.5 inch monitor:
- $208.72 delivered from Newegg; $179.24 delivered from Mstore
- Sandisk Extreme USB 3.0 32GB thumb drive:
- $58.85 delivered from Newegg; $73.97 delivered from Officeworks
To take advantage of the Australian offerings, users choose 'Australia' and 'AUD' on the top left of the Newegg homepage. A 'Newegg Global' option on the left navigation dropdown is then available to view just the products available to international customers.
At the time of writing the categorisations within the Newegg Global shop were difficult to browse, with joysticks appearing under 'Software', external optical drives appearing under 'Ultrabooks & Tablets', and external hard drives appearing under 'Ultrabooks'.
The Californian company claims it has 25 million registered users. The company had US$2.3 billion in sales last year and was placed 170th in the 2012 Forbes America's Largest Private Companies list.
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