some people have said that the internet is the way of the future...
Yes I know that.... Daaa or DOH! we are not stupid.
Actually the future is now, it was the thing of the future 15 years ago.
What I want to say is that(international/cross country) buying from the internet is the downfall of local economies. Australia is gonna be one of those economies!
It has already started.
Buy buying cheap (normally crappy unseen shizen ) from O/seas we as a country throw our money at the "lowest common denominator" ....Yes our money nomally goes to the countries with lower wages etc....
What happens when you fill up someones bucket with water? in this case "money" ...drop by drop?
eventually they have all the assets(water, money, whatever) and we are left dry and cash strapped....sound familiar?
Just saying it's not a good idea to follow along this path. Just because it is forced upon us, doesn't mean it is good for us.
seems to me the easier life gets, the more we suffer.....economically, socially, physically.
This is evidenced in the news daily.
Now I hear you say all the regular come backs for this kinda thread... I know your thinking, and I can understand. BUT I dont agree!
Let me substantiate the reasoning so that you don't think I'm an old dinosaur.
I have a chain of retail stores, I have a manufacturing arm that employs ppl too.
I have a website( a few infact) and sell both online and direct.
I want to continue employing these ppl as I think it is important to keep the economy going.
I could easily(and I have considered it) close my manufacturing arm and halve my shop-staff. ramp up my internet sales and buy all my inventory from China/India etc... But ....I don't feel doing this is economically viable long term. Most imports are cheaply made by shoddy cheap labour, who have no idea (or care) for what they are doing. Leaving us as consumers to buy inferior(yes cheaper) goods.
Don't get me wrong, I could do just that, make at least 3 times the nett profit per annum for say 5 years ..then retire....I'd have to retire as I'd be run out of business for selling sh!t.
I continue to buy local goods (Australian made preferred) but refuse to by online from O/seas. I want my money to stay with an Aussie trader.
My hope is that everyone would kinda see my point and do the same if only in more of a way than what they have been doing.
aren't you the same bloke who 'buys' cheap labour from china to produce your products?
see 3rd post up from the end of the 1st page:
www.seabreeze.com.au/forums/Kitesurfing/General/Prices-havent-changed-in-nearly-10-years/?whichpage=1&SearchTerms=china
why not employ australians to manufacture your goods? something to do with price i'm guessing
glass houses and all that......
Protectionism in its different forms can have benefits, and particularly Australian history shows that.
Australia has/had a competitive advantage in mining and wool production, and as a result, the income per capita was extremely high. However to populate the country and build up a complete society, you need teachers, farmers etc. - but in those fields there was no competitive advantage. As a result, incomes differed substantially, leading to social imbalances. E.g. why should someone study to become a teacher, when a mining dude without education can earn much more?
To counteract this, certain markets were protected with custom duties etc. - which lead to drop of the per capita wealth, because certain goods became more expensive.
Now people wanted the best of both - stabilize society and raise the standard of living. So what they did was investing in education and the services sector, because this way they could offer goods of higher value, which less developed countries with cheap labouring costs could not.
Kite wise, we see a combination of both - R&D is done in Australia, USA, France etc. from qualified, educated people, and manufactured cheap somewhere else. As long as work conditions are fair, I don't see any problem with that. It creates jobs in poor countries and raises their standard of living. More people can afford kites, which benefits the richer countries where they are sold/designed.
In terms of kite retail vs internet - like I said before, I don't think kite shops will go away, because they offer additional value that an online shop can not deliver as good. Letting people demo kites, rapairs, the personal factor..
Other retail examples - a clothing store offers the benefit of letting you try on clothes, which is not possible online.
A music store or bookstore - well unless you are the nostalgic/social type who wants to hold a physical product in his hands, chat to people at the store etc, there is no additional value as compared to buying the product online, either in digital or analog form.
So to conclude: It is all about offering value, and those retailers who can offer more value than an online shop (service, advice, cool promos, funky ambience, smoking hot sales chicks, whatever), they don't have to fear the internet.
And cheap overseas stuff with inadequate quality (even for the cheap price) will only work in the short term, because - they don't offer appropriate value, which the customer will figure out. And with the capability of better knowledge exchange, the internet itself will make it easier to sort out those black sheep.
haha stabber. ****ing retard
Stabber must feel a bit like a politician caught with is pants down right now...
Whoooopsy.....
I would love to know the real percentages of what each catogorised retail sector is loosing out to local or overseas internet purchases, that no one seems to have a truthfull answer on or actual stats. What are we talking about 1 or 2% of the market being online purchase? When alot of retail sectors are supposably reporting that their trading is down 10 to 40% from previous years. I wonder if this holds true to Kite Surfing Retailers in Aus, if we knew then it might end the debate to this subject [}:)]
Sorry guys and gals.
As Laurie said (very recently!)
