Thread: another online tool store

I end up waiting for a lot of things to be delivered as it is, so sure - if I can save some money as well.

There are number of companies already that do online ordering.
I do almost all of my buying online because it's a long way to the shop from here.

The answer is sure, if you can offer a competitive advantage over the existing suppliers. Competitive advantage is not necessarily just on price.
There is range, service, simplicity and availability to consider.

Chris

Im like you Grunt all of my WW shopping is done online... including the wood!

Absolutely.

Originally Posted by Grunt

it's a long way to the shop .

For a sausage roll..

Acdl....

Originally Posted by ozwinner

For a sausage roll..

Acdl....

Well done Al!

Gotta pay that one, but was it original?

I finally visited the new Melbourne store of the big Aussie wood tool company. I was unable to spend money as they had none of the 3 toys I wanted. Tool selection is a bit odd and minimalist with more locks than tools. However, they are good mates and tried hard to help. Hopefully the tool I ordered will come before my next trip to Canada.

Woodworking/business in Australia is a bit of a challenge. Big country and small population means lots of kangaroos between the shops. We need a store like Lee-Valley or Woodcraft that knows something about woodworking, consumer service and business. Such a store would just wipe the (lack of) competition. Maybe the solution is to have a Lee-Valley store in Australia.

online wood purchase. Where do you buy, how satisfied are you with the selection/colour matching and how much the shipping?

I think its all about inventory.
Three models are:
No-inventory (basically impossible to achieve anyway),
Full inventory,
Somewhere in between.

No-inventory:
In order to not hold inventory you are going to have to make massive demands of your suppliers to meet your delivery goals. For them to agree to meet your demands you will need to be able to shift massive amounts of their goods (the pay off).
If the major players (in a small market) can't manage this: what unique aspect are you going to bring to the table to make sure that you can do this?
The trouble is that the size of the Australian woodwork market is small, so even your upstream suppliers will not hold a complete inventory.
It is going to be cumbersome to know "delivery times for what you have on shelf", "delivery times of what you know your supplier has 'on-shelf'", "delivery time of what needs to come from overseas factories, when your supplier doesn't hold inventory".

if this store could offer products in the same quality bracket as the other suppliers at a cheaper price with good customer service

I think the question really is :why isn't the store you are talking about doing the above - are they stupid, lazy, rude or are there real barriers to doing this that are very difficult to overcome?

As said: theres a lot of kangaroos between shops, and between customers. The North Americans have a population of @450 Million that supplies a market base - not so here, therefor a very different marketplace.