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Commuting to work, part four
I decided to go ahead and buy the Deuter Cross City backpack. Even though I know I can get it cheap overseas, I wanted to buy locally. You know, support our local economy and all that. Hurdle number 1: A search for this bag on Google produced only one useful Australian hit, a ski specialty store located interstate. The bag was listed at $139.95 plus shipping, for a total of $159.95. Hmmmm, OK. Maybe there's somewhere in Brisbane that stocks these.
I trawled Deuter's web site until I found details of the Australian distributor, and gave them a call asking for local retailers. The guy gave me a couple names, then explained to me that they'd be unlikely to have stock anyway. It turns out that this is an incredibly popular bag, and it sells out very quickly. OK, fine.. he went on to tell me that they receive four shipments a year from Deuter, and their next shipment was due in mid November. OK, sounds good... and then he revealed to me that they have ordered a total of twenty of these bags for the upcoming shipment. Twenty. For the whole of Australia. For an incredibly popular bag. Now... that'd be like one bag per retailer, if that. Doesn't it strike you that perhaps they should order more bags, more often? And that if they did so, they'd sell even more, and make even more money?
See, this is the problem with living in Australia. We are obligated to go through this Manufacturer-Importer-Retailer chain, each of which adds its own margins (and rightly so). The retailers are held to ransom by the distributors, whose ordering practices might not actually be all that efficient or cost-effective. Retailers are discouraged from importing directly from the manufacturer by the costs associated with freight, customs etc not to mention the fact that the distributors/importers make a point of highlighting those imports as "grey market" imports. They imply that consumers who buy a product that the retailer imported directly will in turn not receive the warranty support they might otherwise get. The topic of the manufacturer-importer-retailer chain is one that generates a great deal of discussion in the local cycling forums.
Fine, fine, fine. So - needing the bag in a hurry (I'll get to that later), and realising I would not be able to support local businesses in my purchase (which I really, really wanted to do), I started trawling overseas sites.
Long story short, I ended up ordering the bag from Wiggle. The bag, including priority despatch and international shipping, came to under $100. What incentive is there to buy locally, when I can save big bucks by buying overseas? Amazon is another perfect example of an overseas company pissing all over the locals on price point alone. We live in a world now where geographic boundaries are transparent to consumers. I can visit any one of a number of websites to buy whatever it is I need. That one or more of those sites is overseas doesn't present the barriers it used to. Internet shopping, combined with decent exchange rates and reliable international couriers, make local purchases difficult to justify, especially for big-ticket items. The local supply chains need to rethink how they do business. The traditional supply chain strategies might work for bricks-and-mortar shopfronts, but I think these strategies need to be updated. Local businesses are losing sales to overseas online competitors, and if we're not careful we might see businesses going under because of it. Some might say that this is a case of natural attrition - if you can't compete in a global market, you shouldn't be in business. There might be some merit to that. But it's of little comfort to our local business people, struggling to compete in a world market, but bound by a supply chain model that actively works against them.
Anyway. I ordered the bag from Wiggle. They didn't have the colour I wanted (cranberry), but as I said, I wanted the bag in a hurry and for the sake of saving $60-odd, I can live without the colour.
The reason I want the bag in a hurry: GreenSight is actually paying for me to attend training on Windows Server 2008. It seems we are actually trying to keep up with the times, finally!! The training course is being held in the city in mid November (hence why I couldn't wait for the local importer's shipment to come in), and I really, really want to be able to commute there with my laptop and other bits and pieces. Also, now that I've made the decision to cycle to work regularly, I'm impatient and want to do it now, now, now!!!!!
Yesterday, I sat down with BestMate and we bikely'd the route from his place to work. I'm going to give it a test run tomorrow. If it's doable (and I'm sure it is), I might start commuting to work as early as next week. Even without the magic, special bag. I'll just use another backpack in the interim, making sure I surround the laptop with shitloads of padding. I hope it's not too uncomfortable, as the backpack I have is quite large and shapeless - not ideal for what I want to do.
Anyway, I've rabbited on long enough. Right now, it seems all I can think about is commuting to work and how I'm going to do it etc. It's taken over my mind, I tell you!