will eplanetworld.com replace sls?

[MichaelTan]

The forums aren't what they are today. I miss my old friends while I make new ones

It takes resources like crazy to make an e-store. Although people think it's easy to make an e-store, my own calculations tell me that the credit card charges, free delivery, fast delivery, huge stocking, etc. make e-stores really quite challenging for the owner to make.

But the benefits to buyer is 24 hour buying, delivery to the home or office, huge variety and can use credit card without surcharge.

I don't know how eplanetworld.com does it but they buy quite a lot and no complaints from the people who buy stuff supplied by us. I guess years of practice delivering mobile phone for the telcos, big resources and reserves of parent company, give it a good foundation.

 

[MichaelTan]

Can forummers feedback on their buying from Bizgram, Video Pro and MyNextCom Online? These shops have both brick and online, so we can't gauge how much of the sales are online and from shop.

We hope everybody succeeds.

 

[royfrosty]

Mynextcom is a single boss alone doing shop deliveries. Imo is not efficient enough. I pity him as he has to work alone after he close his shop around 8pm. He fix up the rigs that we order and deliver to doorstep.

What we really can see if E-stores can provide is service.

1) Delivery within 24hours
2) Able to fix up a rig and deliver to doorstep aka door to door service
3) If the item is deemed DOA, can they do a redelivery for the exchange of faulty items?
4) Price is another utmost important factor. Going thru no overheads it should be lower than retail stores.

For pricing factors the distro themselves have to be flexible on pricing also. The way you all sell things got no incentives for online shops. And they are so call have to follow your pricing. Doing procurement job before and i know that some distros are really pain in the arse. Once we are caught not selling to your recommend pricing, you know what i mean. There should be a flexibility for you all in pricing.

Im not asking estores to beat tradepac pricing. Which i find it they went to the extreme to have a good pricing. All consumer really wants is the price and the service that we can have.

 

[LesterQ]

This eplanetworld confirm got a shiateload of capital money judging from the amount of advertisement done..

And a start up with dbs promotion? Lol.
Some sls stalls don't even accept nets...

 

[Mystyque]

The forums aren't what they are today.

It's inevitable given the ever slowing pace of developments in the PC market. Nothing new = boring = people lose interest and spend time elsewhere. HWC used to be exciting because almost all the time, there is something new to talk about. But nowadays? Just look at GFX.

IIRC, I got my 5870 for around $500 in mid 2010. In those days, I would expect after 4 years, I would be able to get a card 3x~4x faster for $500 or 1.5~2x for $250.

But I see that $250 or so gets me something like a GTX650/HD7770/7850. All of which are at best just slightly better which wouldn't give that wow feel. And not having that much time to game nowadays mean I don't see any sense in spending $500 for a new card anymore.

 

[bornerwave]

Can forummers feedback on their buying from Bizgram, Video Pro and MyNextCom Online? These shops have both brick and online, so we can't gauge how much of the sales are online and from shop.

We hope everybody succeeds.

I bought my ZOTAC 750ti about 5-6 days ago from mynextcom, I would say the botak uncle boss is a great guy

 

[Maeda_Toshiie]

The desktop market is shrinking, and DIY scene throughout the world is shrinking even faster, while the DIY scene was never big in the first place. This makes a smaller pie to be shared among competitors.

Due to my involvement on other corners of the web, I'm more familiar with the US market, and to a certain extent, western Europe.

--------------------------------

In the US, Newegg, Amazon, and TigerDirect are the biggest players. This is due to the human geography of the US (not so much of physical geography. Urban population in the US is mainly spread through suburban sprawl. This kind of population density makes places like SLS impossible to survive, except near the city center of large cities. That's why online retailers shine in the US. On top of that, Newegg offers prices that are difficult to beat, except by large scale places like Microcenter (another topic). Economy of scale for the market size is what that allows Newegg to offer prices that has even foreign customers willing to pay for international shipment. For the locals, Newegg trumps a 2 hour drive (at >90mph) to a physical store, especially when the Newegg prices are not much more, and when buying in bulk (for a complete system).

On the physical shop front in the US, we are mostly talking about small retail stores (similar to Cyberactive, whether part of a chain or not), or the big ones like Microcenter and Fry's. Microcenter and Fry's are favoured by hardware enthusiasts, thanks to their large selection, regular prices, and crazy promotional sales (Microcenter). However, these shops are restricted to few locations in the US. They currently only have ONE store in the whole of California. The rent prices and low suburban density makes having more shops in the US state with the largest economy infeasible. Again, Microcenter and Fry's use economy of scale to offer attractive prices.

MC (offline) or Newegg (online), both strategies are based on:
1. competitive prices
2. (very) large selection of
3. bundles, promotions, rebates, etc
to attract the hardware community.

--------------------------------

In the UK, physical stores play a bigger role, due to population density allowing them to survive. The drawback of such smaller physical stores offer less selection. On the online side, there are many options like scan, aria, overclock, etc, but not as dominant as Newegg. Thanks to the VAT, the UK hardware enthusiast market is a difficult place to operate in, as large vendors are able to effectively compete buy using economies of scale.

--------------------------------

Coming to Singapore, the urban density makes a cluster of small retail shops like SLS viable. Granted, our MRTs are packed, and driving in SG is an excellent way to acquire hypetension, but Singaporeans are spoilt. People are more than free to head down to the newest shopping mall halfway across the island, just to "walk walk, see see", but has no time to go down to SLS? How about those who like to head up to JB during the weekend ? If the Empress you are tied to can't let you go SLS once a while, you might want to do something to regain some control over your own life. But I digress.

SLS can survive, but it must offer prices that cannot be beaten by elsewhere. It has find ways to generate repeat customers.

As for online stores, well, lets face it, who buys retail hardware items?
1. Hardcore hardware people
2. Gamers but not hardware people
3. IT department personnel

I'll ignore 3. Category 1 will go where prices are lowest. Some may even forego small savings just to be able to see and handle the hardware before purchase. However, this is a minority. Yes, we hardware people are a minority. How many here made a spreadsheet to do PSU sizing estimation? Raise your hand.

Category 2 consists of people who are willing to pay a little more for convenience. This constitutes the largest of the hardware purchasing market (but still smaller than the crowd buying big vendor stuff like Alienware, Razer, ROG, etc).


--------------------------------

As for the EPW boss, no offense, but his purported background doesn't fly by me. Many claim how much they care about XXX and that they went into the business because they want to change/ challenge/ whatever of the existing status quo. Big bull boll**ks. I don't care if they even think that they are the second coming of X for the industry.

End of the day, everyone in business is out to make a buck. At the first stage, everyone will do whatever is necessary to keep the red ink out. The next stage is where they will make the black numbers as big as possible. Along the way, they will figure out 90% of the customer base are bunch of dumbarses anyway, so carrot chop them, because it can't hurt their conscience (or the conscience that they convinced themselves to have). Unfortunately, the small size of the local market (along with local politics) means that it is too easy to establish a monopoly (or duopoly) and keep any new player out. Gentlemen (and ladies?), enjoy being part of the Singapore market.

My post sounds cynical, but it is difficult to face up to reality. Business are out to earn money as much as possible, not to do charity. Thinking otherwise is like trying to pretend our favourite idols are a bunch of virgins who never consort with the opposite sex.

--------------------------------

Postscript: I hope that we can see a local version of Microcenter, but I can only dream. This is because such a Microcenter will effectively take over an entire level on SLS, and destroy all other desktop hardware businesses on L3,L4,L5, since they can offer better prices and better selection. And they will have to, in order to survive. The unfortunate fact is that, if this is ever accomplished, do not expect this Microcenter to maintain low prices. They will price as high as demand elasticity allow. Either way, local consumers suffer. Again, enjoy being part of the Singapore market.

--------------------------------

Post-postscript. I'd be surprised if this post remains undeleted (or at least unedited).

 

[Maeda_Toshiie]

Small note: I work in a group that deals with computational research, and of that group, ie people who actually write programs, scripts, etc on a regular basis, I am the sole person out of 6, who builds his own computer, and actually knows about the hardware market. We are that small of a group. As for married personnel, forgetaboutit.

 

[MichaelTan]

Damn guys, you wrote the manual for success. Thank you thank you for all your feedback. Will read 3x and mull. Thank you so much.

 

[uncle168]

i just came back from bedok point, the basement is empty all the shops have closed down

in april challenger bedok will reopen and in may harvery norman will take up all the units in the basement

in the past you can only get pc or laptop in sls or funan, no electronic stores like pertama sell them, at most they sell electronic type writer

steve jobs changed the computer industry into a consumer goods

now u just walk into courts, best denki or Harvey norman can buy tablet, laptop and pc

if u don't talk about the cpu unit, if u need a simple upgrade like a new mouse or simple monitor also can get from challenger

the market has become bigger as the price of computer has drop and more pple are educated on how to use a computer

however physical store owners are reluctant to change the game as the distro don't want to offend the sls shops by aggressively selling on their own estore and the brands they carried were not enough to entice consumer to buy

hwz accept advertising both from distro and sls shops, if it were to start an estore, it may offend the sls shops as they would think of hwz as a competitor

the initial start-up cost and the significant risk of failure stopped most pple from starting an online store for electronics goods

courts have one but is more for general electronics goods

recently redmart with funding by facebook founder is growing rapidly

I believe as the volume of goods increase, the unit price of good will go down thru economies of scale

I am surprise why sheng shiong and ntuc didn't push for estores and let redmart overtake them

I only found out about this eplanet yesterday as I was looking thru financial statements of listed companies to park my mountain of cash in my posb cash account

not advertising for anyone for those who read my postings

I will never buy from eplanet or redmart as I am a value for money consumer

look at my pc specs on the right and u will know that if everyone were like me and buy EOL products which is sold for almost no profit will go bankrupt

fortunately most consumer in Singapore are not like me

I think other than convergent, ban leong is also supplying the estore

the price they sell to eplanet is the same price they sell to sls stores

the consumers have to decide whether they like to save a few dollars to buy from sls or click a few buttons to wait for free shipping to their house

actually its the same, the few dollar u save is the same as u pay for them to send to your house

it depends whether u value your money or time more, depending on your opportunity cost or income level

I am a WP voter, put that doesn't mean I shouldn't buy GLCs stocks

if WP form the government, the GLCs stocks will also be controlled by them

one must be rational to separate politics and commercial decisions to form good judgement

good to see more discussion on this as the gov incentive have kick-start a electronic redmart

I hope the industrial will grow regionally in south-east asia as volume rise, then can use Singapore to house the estore servers and use Malaysia or Indonesia as the logistic hub to serve the region

when sim wong hoo told pple computer got sound, pple laugh at him

change is cuming

keekeekee

 

[Hailgod]

i just came back from bedok point, the basement is empty all the shops have closed down

in april challenger bedok will reopen and in may harvery norman will take up all the units in the basement

in the past you can only get pc or laptop in sls or funan, no electronic stores like pertama sell them, at most they sell electronic type writer

steve jobs changed the computer industry into a consumer goods

now u just walk into courts, best denki or Harvey norman can buy tablet, laptop and pc

if u don't talk about the cpu unit, if u need a simple upgrade like a new mouse or simple monitor also can get from challenger

the market has become bigger as the price of computer has drop and more pple are educated on how to use a computer

however physical store owners are reluctant to change the game as the distro don't want to offend the sls shops by aggressively selling on their own estore and the brands they carried were not enough to entice consumer to buy

hwz accept advertising both from distro and sls shops, if it were to start an estore, it may offend the sls shops as they would think of hwz as a competitor

the initial start-up cost and the significant risk of failure stopped most pple from starting an online store for electronics goods

courts have one but is more for general electronics goods

recently redmart with funding by facebook founder is growing rapidly

I believe as the volume of goods increase, the unit price of good will go down thru economies of scale

I am surprise why sheng shiong and ntuc didn't push for estores and let redmart overtake them

I only found out about this eplanet yesterday as I was looking thru financial statements of listed companies to park my mountain of cash in my posb cash account

not advertising for anyone for those who read my postings

I will never buy from eplanet or redmart as I am a value for money consumer

look at my pc specs on the right and u will know that if everyone were like me and buy EOL products which is sold for almost no profit will go bankrupt

fortunately most consumer in Singapore are not like me

I think other than convergent, ban leong is also supplying the estore

the price they sell to eplanet is the same price they sell to sls stores

the consumers have to decide whether they like to save a few dollars to buy from sls or click a few buttons to wait for free shipping to their house

actually its the same, the few dollar u save is the same as u pay for them to send to your house

it depends whether u value your money or time more, depending on your opportunity cost or income level

I am a WP voter, put that doesn't mean I shouldn't buy GLCs stocks

if WP form the government, the GLCs stocks will also be controlled by them

one must be rational to separate politics and commercial decisions to form good judgement

good to see more discussion on this as the gov incentive have kick-start a electronic redmart

I hope the industrial will grow regionally in south-east asia as volume rise, then can use Singapore to house the estore servers and use Malaysia or Indonesia as the logistic hub to serve the region

when sim wong hoo told pple computer got sound, pple laugh at him

change is cuming

keekeekee

Your problem is that you think that eplanet is newegg. No. They sell much higher than sls, not a couple of dollars. Even mynextcom puts their prices well. This eplanet thing is dumb

 

[t258jgn]

Some of the boliao shops always complain to Distros the online prices too low & they can't chop buyers. They even threaten Distros they'll stop selling their stuffs if no action taken.

Like that how eplanetworld.com going to sell at competitive prices

























I always kanna complained

 

[hengheng220]

i just came back from bedok point, the basement is empty all the shops have closed down

in april challenger bedok will reopen and in may harvery norman will take up all the units in the basement

in the past you can only get pc or laptop in sls or funan, no electronic stores like pertama sell them, at most they sell electronic type writer

steve jobs changed the computer industry into a consumer goods

now u just walk into courts, best denki or Harvey norman can buy tablet, laptop and pc

if u don't talk about the cpu unit, if u need a simple upgrade like a new mouse or simple monitor also can get from challenger

the market has become bigger as the price of computer has drop and more pple are educated on how to use a computer

however physical store owners are reluctant to change the game as the distro don't want to offend the sls shops by aggressively selling on their own estore and the brands they carried were not enough to entice consumer to buy

hwz accept advertising both from distro and sls shops, if it were to start an estore, it may offend the sls shops as they would think of hwz as a competitor

the initial start-up cost and the significant risk of failure stopped most pple from starting an online store for electronics goods

courts have one but is more for general electronics goods

recently redmart with funding by facebook founder is growing rapidly

I believe as the volume of goods increase, the unit price of good will go down thru economies of scale

I am surprise why sheng shiong and ntuc didn't push for estores and let redmart overtake them

I only found out about this eplanet yesterday as I was looking thru financial statements of listed companies to park my mountain of cash in my posb cash account

not advertising for anyone for those who read my postings

I will never buy from eplanet or redmart as I am a value for money consumer

look at my pc specs on the right and u will know that if everyone were like me and buy EOL products which is sold for almost no profit will go bankrupt

fortunately most consumer in Singapore are not like me

I think other than convergent, ban leong is also supplying the estore

the price they sell to eplanet is the same price they sell to sls stores

the consumers have to decide whether they like to save a few dollars to buy from sls or click a few buttons to wait for free shipping to their house

actually its the same, the few dollar u save is the same as u pay for them to send to your house

it depends whether u value your money or time more, depending on your opportunity cost or income level

I am a WP voter, put that doesn't mean I shouldn't buy GLCs stocks

if WP form the government, the GLCs stocks will also be controlled by them

one must be rational to separate politics and commercial decisions to form good judgement

good to see more discussion on this as the gov incentive have kick-start a electronic redmart

I hope the industrial will grow regionally in south-east asia as volume rise, then can use Singapore to house the estore servers and use Malaysia or Indonesia as the logistic hub to serve the region

when sim wong hoo told pple computer got sound, pple laugh at him

change is cuming

keekeekee

hahahaha are you implying that next time everyone just sit at home to buy and sell stuffs? liddat everyone no need go out liao all the shops in singapore can close down liao move on to online stores... if NTUC or sheng shiong go estore then everyone cannot pick their veggie all get the rotten one you want meh? ofc store front got use one la not every industry can go into online store one... and for your info Fairprice do have online store

 

[royfrosty]

Cannot lah NTUC become estores. Confirm anyhow choose the groceries.

I do not want my veg to have too many holes or too many rotten parts.

 

[micheloving]

I think it's a good idea to buy from EPW than SLS.

Think about it, in order to get parts from SLS, most of us would need to spend maybe additional $5 so the price difference will be bigger especially if you are buying a $10 mouse.

The 2 hours or so that it takes will be major loss of productivity, imagine if your keyboard/mouse/router kaput or your HDD got bad sectors and still need to wait 2 hours before you can set it up and replace it.

It's better to order from EPW, take leave/off and wait at home the next day or maybe the day (or maybe ask your wife/parents to wait instead) after since deliveries often cock up. Maybe whole family can stay home and have quality family time together

Plus since EPW is local, if the wrong item is delivered or DOA, you don't have to spend 2 hours going back to SLS to get a replacement, just contact them and can enjoy taking leave again the next day

You forgot reliable sellers such as fortan and some new guys lurking in the forums that provide/rec parts also assembly and delivery services all together at very reasonable prices .
No matter how good EPW services as long as prices are unattractive we will never know nor care.

 

[simon45op]

The forums aren't what they are today. I miss my old friends while I make new ones

It takes resources like crazy to make an e-store. Although people think it's easy to make an e-store, my own calculations tell me that the credit card charges, free delivery, fast delivery, huge stocking, etc. make e-stores really quite challenging for the owner to make.

But the benefits to buyer is 24 hour buying, delivery to the home or office, huge variety and can use credit card without surcharge.

I don't know how eplanetworld.com does it but they buy quite a lot and no complaints from the people who buy stuff supplied by us. I guess years of practice delivering mobile phone for the telcos, big resources and reserves of parent company, give it a good foundation.

Dear michaelTan,
i think you forgot one important thing which contribute to a succesful ecommerce site. The website itself. Modern day site are no longer just displaying data. A good user experience designed site can bring in extra profit/traffic flow.

I notice your estore is built using magento which is quite a
powerful e-commerce site builder. But unfortunately you did not use the features to the max potential. Did you hire a fresh grad to design it? Because some of the design(point 2 & 6) are pretty much standard.

1)Cross-sell/up-sell/reviews/newsletter are missing (marketing tools basically)
2)A link at bottom right to jump to top of page on click for easy navigation
3)Search suggestion are missing
4)Product filter are missing(filter by color price etc)
5)The overall look and feel design looks non-interactive and is not responsive.might consider using html5 boilerplate.
6) social media links for user to twit/ facebook about the product

....and the list goes on

Dear uncle168 or boss of eplantworld,
your site looks ok for a local site. Yes your search suggestion is also missing.If you plan to go big,you may want to host on amazon aws/Internap(like convergent) to handle international traffic rather than hosting on your own.Also your site doesnt try to promote products related to what i want. For example on amazon homepage it try to post related stuff based on past viewing history. You may try
to change the "best seller" to be related to the current category surfed by the user or the homepage advertisement
banner.

Just my pov hope no one is offended.

 

[koroshiya8]

You mean like t258jgn?

LOL.... spot on... i've bought quite a few times from him and so far it's very good.. once got a wrong BR recorder sent and he resend to me immediately the next day...
The only improvement i hope to see is full online website for his products..

 

[mypillowtalks]

Well, in my opinion, putting pricing aside, it will work well with people who have skills in troubleshooting computers. Eg. DIY-ers.

However for people who like to own a DIY PC but doesn't know how to build a computer, an online shop + physical shop will be the best. Anything they can bring the system down to the shop.

I used to work in SLS doing repair/install/sales of DIY systems.( i saw the name of the shop i used to work here ) IMO, the most important thing about buying a DIY computer will be the buying process and after sales service.

Some customer wants to touch the casing, feel the buttons, see the gpu box, see how the technicians do the wiring, do cable management, see the half open PC boosts up, etc. The whole experience is very exciting to some. It makes them feel 'safe' when they know everything is working and they can bring it back if anything is wrong. Some wants to learn how to wire up the USB headers, the HD audio, AC97 audio. I even encounter some who wants to help build by installing the CPU and RAM themselves

As computer are prone to breakdown, everyday now and then there will be customers bringing their DIY PC to the shop for troubleshooting. From experience, if a customer get a DIY PC from Shop A, they will demand good after sales service from Shop A, regardless they build it themselves or we build it for them.

Of course, nothing beats the smile on their face when they see their computer boots up again.

So i don't think it can fully replace SLS, unless they can provide after sales service(eg free troubleshooting for the built computer, be it by the customer or them)

 

[Mystyque]

You forgot reliable sellers such as fortan and some new guys lurking in the forums that provide/rec parts also assembly and delivery services all together at very reasonable prices .
No matter how good EPW services as long as prices are unattractive we will never know nor care.

I think you missed my point...

 

[ykgoh]

-snip-

For pricing factors the distro themselves have to be flexible on pricing also. The way you all sell things got no incentives for online shops. And they are so call have to follow your pricing. Doing procurement job before and i know that some distros are really pain in the arse. Once we are caught not selling to your recommend pricing, you know what i mean. There should be a flexibility for you all in pricing.

-snip-

The distros threatening retailers?

Some of the boliao shops always complain to Distros the online prices too low & they can't chop buyers. They even threaten Distros they'll stop selling their stuffs if no action taken.

-snip-

The retailers threatening distros?

So in the end, who are the ones threatening the others?

Anyway, wah lau eh, price-fixing and anti-competitive practices sexposed here. Can complain to Competition Commission Singapore or gahmen? What has happened to free market and competition?

So in the end, who are the ones engaged in price-fixing? Distros or retailers? No wonder things are expensive in Singapore, not just IT products. Consumers always milked gao gao. FML.