Buying A Boat In The States Or...
G'day mates,
I apologise in advance for this long/ish post.
I have been asked on another forum "Why do you look at buying a boat in the States? You would be better of to buy where you plan on cruising...Australia or New Zealand"
And I guess that's true...To a point. The truth is, to many Australian and New Zealand boat sellers "believe wrongly" they have a closed market. They believe, wrongly, that Australians and New Zealanders looking to buy a boat can only buy in AU or NZ.
It's the same with a lot of other retailers here in AU...They believe, wrongly, that they have a protected market, buyers who need a product must buy from them! Nothing could be farther from the truth!
Back in 1996-98 I was trying to get local Australian businesses to get into online marketing of their business but I did not succeed. Every one of the businesses I talked with believed, wrongly, and told me...Computers and this Internet thing is just a fad and will soon die-off. Boy! Were they ever wrong!
Today those same businesses are blaming everything but themselves, for their drop in sales, in-shop clients and income. Some are closing branches and some are even blaming business failures on...The Internet! Or rather, people doing their shopping on the Internet!
I have been shopping online since around 1995, I have bought from China, the UK, Canada and the States and in all that I have bought online, I had only three complaints about a product, all three complaints were promptly dealt with and I was a happy shopper.
The last thing I bought on-line was a Master Cylinder for my LR Discovery. The Aussie suppliers were asking from $350 to $397 for the unit. I ordered one on-line from a LR supplier in the UK for a
total cost, postage included of...$136
Why do Aus' and Kiwi boat sellers still believe they have a captured market? Don't they know buyers can find a better deal elsewhere, like in the States.
With this
1974 Australian Ferro Cement Coastal Cruiser, the seller is asking AU $87,000
With this
1967 American Fibreglass Coastal Cruiser, the seller is asking US $49,900
Which would be the better buy? I believe the American boat, with her newer FULL drive-train, even after adding an extra 30% cost for importing the boat from the States. $49,900US + 30% = $64,870US = $ 62,892AU. So even if you paid the full asking price and 30% for importing the American boat, you would still save $24,108AU
Like it or not, today we ALL live in a global market, and if we want to compete and sell our products, whatever those products may be, we need to price the product to compete in the global market...Specially when we advertise the product on the Internet where a buyer from anywhere in the world MAY end-up being the buyer of your product.
Or am I getting this all wrong
Bill
Australia