Well regarded US e-tailer Newegg has made a first move in its international expansion plans. The move has occurred a little later than it was expected but at least it has materialised. Newegg has just announced a pilot program which will allow UK and Australia residents to order a limited selection of the products displayed on the newegg.com website.
"We're extending the Newegg customer experience beyond North America, selectively addressing English-speaking countries overseas to begin that process," 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".
Newegg says that "several thousand products" are now orderable and shippable from the Newegg US site to the UK or Australia. Also the firm assures us that the products on offer internationally will be "expanding dramatically throughout the year".
When arriving on the Newegg site, UK and Australia customers are advised to click on the 'NeweggGlobal' menu item at the upper left, under the 'Shop All Stores' heading. From there you can navigate through all the categories of electronic goods you might expect. The site was clever enough to have automatically selected GBP as my currency upon arrival, so I didn't have to select it.
Whilst having a quick browse of the graphics card section I clicked on several of the £s listed items only to find that they were out of stock or that 'Shipping Restrictions Apply' so the item couldn't be added to my basket. Also other items in the NeweggGlobal store were 'Auto Removed' after I added them to my basket as "Shipment to the country you have selected is not available". Obviously it's day one for this service so these frustrating aspects of ordering should be ironed out in time. Newegg says it will be closely monitoring the new operation as it scales its international product availability.
After finding some hardware I could add to my basket to get delivered to the UK I found that there was a considerable amount of tax, duty and shipping to add to get to the price you will pay. An Nvidia graphics card listed at £95, for example, would result in a total of £127 being debited from my payment card including the 4-7 business day delivery method. Perhaps if this pilot is successful Newegg will open up international distribution centres, to better compete against the homegrown and international e-tailers with such facilities already in the UK/Australia.
