christian-webmaster wrote:
Bonjour à tous,
J ‘ai l’idée….(c’est seulement pour l’instant une idée) d’ouvrir sur le site un espace ou vous pourriez trouver tous ce dont vous avez besoin pour partir… ou pour avoir un peu d’Australie chez vous en France…
Salut,
I think in theory it’s a great idea to do (especially as I’ve had the same idea myself for a year and my husband and I had the intention to start an online Aussie souvenir shop with also my Aussie photography.
After months of research, and attending E-commerce workshops, my findings for myself is that it would make a good hobby, but as for becoming a commercial and viable business with all the other competition out there – maybe not.
There are many large single wholesalers who sell a whole wide range of different Aussie souvenirs from the one location and are already set up for E-commerce and have well known brands & some with agents overseas & in Europe already.
Par exemple:
http://www.ozstore.com.au/Directory/ViewInCat.asp?ID=2068
Site with links to 14 Aussie souvenir e-commerce shop online sites (some non linking, & seem to no longer exist)
http://www.darylwisely.com.au (beautiful landscape photography of Australia but the postage for limited edition prints to send outside Australia is $25 ea!)
Nufeel Australia (sheepskin products) – also has online ordering: http://nufeel.thehub.com.au/orderform.html
http://www.emuspirit.com/index.cfm?page=onlinestore a company selling emu oil products Australia-wide, also online.
Ashdene – http://www.ashdene.com.au/souvnrs.shtml. Big company, wide range of souvenirs, also has distributors in Europe.
Nu-color vue – http://www.nucolorvue.com.au – another large company with a considerable % of the market.
http://www.rosepostcards.com/ – another big one. Wholesale & personalised souvenirs aussi.
http://www.roadsign.com.au
For us also there was also the issue of not being able to compete with souvenirs made so much more cheaply in China. Even having contacts already in the Australian Tourism industry, finding ok priced aussie suppliers is still quite an issue and we’ve had to buy a mixture of Australian and asian made.
Our research also showed quite strongly that when it comes to cost, buyers aren’t willing to pay more just because it’s made in Oz, (unless it’s for luxury or unique items) – despite a lot of « Buy locally – Buy Australian » campaigning here.
Difficile aussi to justify charging higher prices on the Internet for Australian Made when the photos of the cheap and more expensive look the same.
Also there’s the issue of international postage eating into profits.
In the end I shall probably continue to run my shop as a physical ‘from home’ small business with my customers being from my herberge de jeunesse.
Also another thing which was disappointing for us in our research was the lack of large numbers of people searching for Aussie products on the Internet – for example searches on inventory@overture research site found the following:
Searches made globally via search engines on the internet for the month of Jan 2005:
Made in Australia products:
502 searches on « sheepskin boots »
115 searches made for other oz made goods
478 for Oz souvenirs
….but then there’s 572 hits just on Tim Tams!
Could be good to target chocolate addicts, because after all, when the Tim Tams run out, you’d need to order more! 😆
By comparison:
*Made in France searches: 338
French souvenirs 176 (quite surprisingly low!)
* Made in China – 6400 searches made!!!!
* Lord of the Rings NZ – 800
Bonne chance!
The e-commerce workshops also told us that such niche market sites are the way of the future….. 😀
Kate
, le il y a 18 années et 8 mois.
