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Online shopping not what it was?

Ah, I remember the halcion days of online shopping.

Browse the web for some interesting looking bit of tat on a Chinese etail site. Whip out the credit card, type in a few digits and, within a couple of short weeks, your purchase would arrive and a nice delivery man would ask for your signature.

My first exposure to this was via the Deal Extreme website, where an incredible array of things could be had for little more than a song.

Even better, much of it came with free airmail shipping.

How the hell could they make something and ship it all the way to New Zealand from China for a measly dollar?

Who cared... the choice was limitless and the prices were shockingly low so I was a regular purchaser.

Of course since the DX.com days a myriad of other Chinese etailers have popped up and now we're spoilt for choice.

Wish.com is probably one of the most recognisable of these super-deal places but it does have a reputation for swindles and scams so people are best advised not to believe what's written in the product listings. Indeed, there are entire YouTube channels that exist solely on exposing the scammy products from Wish.com.

That was a few years ago though and times have changed.

Today, shopping from a Chinese etailer is not the joy that it once was.

Firstly, the Kiwi dollar is at near-record lows so every US$1 you spend actually takes $1.73 out of your bank account or credit card total.

Secondly, freight has become enormously expensive, even from China. There are very few of those "free shipping" deals on offer these days and even when there are, that charge is often built into the price you're paying for the item.

Which leads us to the third problem -- prices are skyrocketing across the board but particularly in the area of electronics. This obviously being compounded by various chip shortages.

Finally, there's the addition of GST by many of the Chinese etailers. Time was when your overseas purchases were effectively free of GST, so long as the FOB landed value was under NZ$400. Even if you spent more than that the Chinese sellers would invariably declare the package as "toys $10" or something similar so as to evade that liability.

So there you have it... things have conspired to make purchasing stuff direct from China a lot less attractive than it used to be. In fact, I am now purchasing a good deal of the stuff I need from local sources -- because it works out faster and cheaper these days.

I guess this is exactly what the government wanted when it demanded that GST be added by those overseas sellers.

However, this doesn't help our position as a trader in the global economy. I saw Dave Jones (an electronics engineer and YouTuber from Australia) posting that freight out of Oz was killing the viability of him exporting products and it's the same here. In fact I've grizzled about this before in this column. The problem is that it's even worse now than it's ever been.

Despite our very low dollar, it's just not even remotely practical for a small NZ business to engage in international online retail unless they're having their products manufactured offshore and drop-shipped directly to customers. What a disaster!

Instead of setting up a small production line for my ADSB alarm, employing some locals, bringing much-needed work to a small rural town and boosting the country's export receipts -- I'm not even going to try to attempt such a venture. Any hope of even breaking even is totally scuttled by the cost of shipping these small electronic devices to other parts of the world.

Unless you're selling intangibles or intellectual property (such as software), NZ is just not the place to be manufacturing and distributing from in the current economic climate.

Perhaps the NZ government could learn from China in this regard and help kick-start a raft of small kitchen-table export-oriented businesses. Remember that "free shipping" being offered by DX and a raft of other Chinese etailers? That was simply a subsidy from the Chinese government designed to boost exports and create new markets. Why can't we do that?

Instead of paying people to subsist on the dole or some other kind of benefit, why not make it economically viable for small enterprises to set up, employ people and get their products to international markets with affordable freight options?

Hell, the government owns an international airline and we've yet to see tourist numbers return to previous giddy heights so why can't we use some of that capacity to haul freight to far-away countries at affordable rates for small NZ exporters?

Nah... that'll never happen, far better to waste that money on non-productive expenditure like benefits, and more flowers for the offices of parliament I guess.

What do readers think? Should we be creating opportunity for small NZ manufacturers and exporters by learning from China's play-book. After all, that "free shipping" was really pivotal in turning them into the consumer-goods powerhouse they have become today.

Carpe Diem folks!

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