The primary value proposition of blogshops is their ability to match demand with supply. In many instances, there are many brands that are not sold in the stores here, so SEA shoppers have to resort to the Internet to source them from the US or Europe. Still, there are many US websites that do not accept international credit cards, or sites that do not want to ship overseas.
Enter the concierge shopping services (actually, I do not know what these are known as officially, so I just call them concierge services). The idea is simple: When you sign up, they will give you a US address to ship your goods to, from which it will be sent to you. This means paying more for postage, but for avid shoppers, they do not mind the extra charge in order to get what they really want.
Note that many blogshops fulfill essentially the same needs in that they source for things that cannot be found locally and deliver them to local customers. Thus,
we discover here a primary weakness in the existing system, that is its
inability to deliver goods from overseas to certain destinations for a number
of technical reasons (another one is when overseas merchants like in the US who
do not accept credit cards that are based outside the US) which make it
impossible for shoppers here to access certain goods.
Examples of concierge shopping services are:
VPost
VS Hub
Citibank's Globeshopper
Here's the article from The Straits Times Digital Life from 2008, which has been posted on the Asiaone website as well.
She's a Globeshopper after vPost messes up orders
It was the last straw and the mother of three decided to finally switch shipping services.
by Irene Tham
Mon, Sep 08, 2008
The Straits Times, Digital Life
HO WAN SIN, 34, skipped the Great Singapore Sale that took place here in June and July. She found better deals on the Internet.
In the last few months, the mother of three young children has been filling her shopping basket with Victoria's Secrets clothes and lingerie, diaper creams, soaps and books from merchants in the United States.
She is won over by the wider variety and cheaper deals online; cheaper partly because of the weakened US dollar. The exchange rate is now US$1 to S$1.41.
'Some of the stuff - if they were sold here in the first place - would have cost me twice as much,' she said.
Also, she doesn't have the time or the stamina to brave the Orchard Road crowd for good bargains.
That was why Wan Sin became one of the early adopters of vPost when it was introduced in Dec 2003.
vPost is a shipping service that provides shoppers here with a US address to enter on a merchant's website when ordering goods. It also provides a virtual concierge - a paid service - for shoppers who do not have a US-issued credit card. The concierge buys products on customers' behalf, then ships them to Singapore.
Recently, she dumped vPost for Globeshopper. It was launched in March this year by Citibank, global logistics firm DHL and British e-commerce solutions firm Borderlinx.
'I'm a Globeshopper convert; it's cheaper and allows me to keep track of my shopping.'
Detailed tracking - from the time the goods leave the merchant's warehouse to the time they arrive at the Singapore customs - is available on Globeshopper's website, powered by DHL.
This feature is lacking at vPost.
Also, Globeshopper's concierge service is free, while vPost charges a service fee of $20.38 per merchant as well as a 5.1 per cent transaction fee.
That's not all. vPost also charges a holding fee of $10.19 per item per week if the goods are held at customers' US addresses for more than 14 days.
Globeshopper's holding service is free for a month, which gives customers more than enough time to consolidate their orders before shipping them here.
By lumping their purchases, customers benefit from economies of scale in a single shipment rather than multiple ones.
The last straw was when vPost messed up her orders.
'Once, vPost claimed it had an item shipped to me when, in fact, the merchant rejected my order. vPost said it would destroy the item, which I never paid for,' she said.
This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life on 3 September 2008.
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