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Gadgets galore at your fingertips

Hi-tech electronics is an area that has changed forever the face of gadgetry.

Back in the "good old days", a gadget might be some really cool mechanical thing that was either entertaining, intriguing or strangely useful -- but today the average person's idea of a gadget almost certainly involves the movement of electrons.

A lot of the coolest gadgets involve hi-power LEDs, MP3/MP4 capabilities, fancy color (LED/OLED/LCD) displays and maybe even a little wireless.

But where do you get all this gadgetry?

Well some local companies (such as JayCar (hey, where are my replacement 74HC4061 ICs Jaycar -- I'm still waiting!) have a fair to modest range of hi-tech gadgetry -- but I found a much better place on the internet.

Now it's not often that I plug a commercial website -- mainly because I'd rather they ante'd up with some money (hey, sponsorship available!) but when the deals are obviously the kind of thing that Aardvark's readers will find valuable I always put any possible self-interest aside.

So, how about an online store that carries everything from knuckle-dusters and mace (illegal in NZ by the way) to lasers, LED torches, cheap Skype phones, Lithium Ion, NiMH, LiFePO4 batteries, tools, soldering paste, MP3/4 players, toys, computer bits, flash-RAM cards/drives, USB trinkets, rare-earth magnets, bluetooth accessories, etc, etc?

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Sounds too good to be true?

Well maybe it is, maybe it isn't -- but I've just placed a small order with DealExtreme.com to find out.

Now if I was a money-grubbing fool who only wrote about this website to take advantage of their affiliate scheme, you'd find this page littered with little URLs that could each earn me a few cents. But hey, this is Aardvark and I don't do that sort of thing. There's no financial reward to me for bringing this site to your attention.

Which means you'll also have to trawl through the many pages of cool gadgetry to find stuff on your own.

Don't believe everything you read though. For example, I really don't think this device is going to do much for your power bill, even though this Aussie TradeMe user is happy to sell them locally (do you think we're that gullible mate?).

But, you'd better get used to this kind of website -- it's the future of retail.

For a long time, retailers and traders have been importing all sorts of real cheap stuff from China, adding a 100% (or greater) mark-up, then flogging it off in their stores, on their websites or via TradeMe.

However, now that the Net has become ubiquitous and credit cards have made overseas purchases safe, simple and convenient, the Chinese are starting to sell direct through websites like this.

Goodbye middle-man, goodby all those massive markups.

Okay, so shops like The Warehouse will still make good money by importing and selling every-day stuff like tee-shirts, kitchenware, etc -- but a lot of other stuff will just come straight in through the mail, with obvious savings to the consumer.

The average Net user however, can make some very real savings buy purchasing direct from China through the Net and that's going to steer lots of people away from local importers.

For example, take this servo which costs just US$$3.49 (that's NZ$4.70 at today's rate). At this price, why would *anyone* bother paying $12 each on TradeMe?

But wait, there's more!

Look at this radio control set for just US$500 (NZ$675). The same thing bought from the official NZ distributor will set you back *twice* that much (see the bottom of this page).

So it seems that (at least where hi-tech is concerned), direct personal imports through this kind of website will make it *very* hard for local importers to compete.

Not only is the purchase price much lower, but those importing directly won't even have to pay GST on items less than NZ$400 in value. What's more, most of these Chinese companies underdeclare the value of shipments -- often declaring them simply as "toys" or "toy parts" with a value of US$10 or so.

Unless the purchaser is very unlucky, an overworked customs service don't bother opening such packages and checking the value of their contents.

So -- what's your favourite gadget supply website?

Do you think these websites that ship directly from China will see a change in our buying habits for hi-tech gadgetry?

How ill local importers compete when they have much higher overheads and the need to pay GST on the products they sell?

What are *your* experiences of personal importing through the internet?

Have your say on this...

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