Thread: Importing, Shipping, pitfalls and work arounds

Originally Posted by stug

We are a small market. Say Hunting and Fishing go to Remington and say we want a good deal on rifles because we will sell 10,000 in one year. Remington laugh at them and say Cabela's sell 1,000,000 a year take the deal on offer. Our retailers will pay more for the same product than the American retailers, then they have to ship it half way across the world. We are a market of at most 4 million, USA has 318 million. There retailers can afford to make smaller margins because their turnover is so high.
The cheap deals we can access on the internet are because of the buying power of the US domestic market.

We all want a good wage/salary for our job, but someone has to pay us, whether they are our employer or customer. We all want our money to go further, but if we all send our money overseas then that money is not circulating in NZ, there is less money to go around, and one of the first things to drop is wages/jobs. Just look at the prediction for the rural economy with the low milk payment.

If we all buy everything overseas then the local suppliers will close, then we will have to buy everything from overseas, and good luck getting someone to ship gunpowder. I can't even find someone that will ship a carbon fibre stock overseas.

If you get bad service then tell them, a letter email to head office might make a difference, if it doesn't shop at another shop in NZ.

Failing that then set up as an importer, I'll buy off you for the really cheap prices you will offer.

We are not a small market, we are a small part of a large global market. Also shipping prices aren't that relevant because goods are shipped around the world several times before they arrive at the shop. That plastic goose decoy or camo chair you buy from H&F was made with resources from Australia and the middle east in China and then shipped to the states before someone even thinks about shipping it here.

If the local stores are reduced to selling the restricted items only - rifles, gunpowder and ammo then thats not such a bad thing. We can go on ordering everything else off the web and the local retailers can reduce their land and wage expenses by having a smaller shop. Better yet go to a on line model like Digit has and they don't need a big flash shop on prime real estate.

You can cry all you want about the old ways going but this has been the case since weekend trading was allowed and all the four squares and daires closed because you can buy milk and bread cheaper from Countdown on a saturday. At the end of the day everyone wanted cheap bread and milk so the small stores with their high costs and prices had to close.