Jan 16, 2018 - Some Kiwi firms see the Amazon opening in Australia as a threat. Others believe it’s a massive opportunity to crack a major market in good company. Kevin Kevany discovers one of its biggest advocates.
Amazon.com.au’s opening in Australia is anything but a threat to New Zealand’s SME (small and medium enterprise) manufacturing sector. In fact, it could turn out to be one of the greatest boosts to our food and beverage, specialist clothing, hi-tech and other locally derived and targeted product producers in decades. Certainly since the global financial crisis.
And it can simplify any Kiwi company’s first foray into the prized Aussie market; always a daunting task for a first-timer.
One man voicing these optimistic predictions (“Amazon will be transformative for Australasia, given the relatively small size of the regional market”) knows what he is talking about too.
Paul Grey has made a great success of guiding similar product producers onto the Amazon marketplace – which has been described as “the Western world’s largest online retailer, offering customers almost any product, delivered almost anywhere, and all at very competitive prices”.
Grey has an established reputation for doing just that in Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, plus many years’ experience helping Kiwi companies export into the US.
He now stands ready to provide his experience and skills in the Australasian market through his company, ExportX, plus his proprietary software which simplifies the process of getting products listed with Amazon.
“ExportX specialises in representing brands in the Amazon sales channel,” says Grey, adding that it's not trivial to do it properly. “We're closely involved in preparations for the Australia launch, and we're hoping many local businesses will choose ExportX to handle regional Amazon sales.
“In addition, our software arm offers A2X, which is a cloud service, automating the accounting for Amazon marketplace sales. A2X is already processing around $1 billion of third-party Amazon sales worldwide, for more than 1,000 sellers. It will likely be an essential system component for local businesses setting up to sell on the new website.”
Continue here to read the full article written by Kevin Kevany for NZBusiness || January 15, 2018 |||