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The New York Times, Thursday
Styles - June 2005
| Years
ago when I went to Europe on my honeymoon, currency exchange
rates were my friend. Prices were so cheap that my husband and
I calculated, as we counted our cash on the plane home from
Rome, that the two-week trip actually cost $4 less than we would
have spent if we’d never left Brooklyn. The world has
changed. After months of cringing in fear next to the euro,
the dollar has made gains, but they are still too |
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our
credit card number supposedly through a secure connection, we
have to trust the company to not use our credit card inappropriately.
My guess is people are more comfortable doing that with a domestic
company.” In a study of 42 e-commerce sites in Germany,
France and Switzerland in 2003, Professor Nickerson and a graduate
student, Stephanie Turberg found that fewer than a third of
the sites offered an English-language version. They also found
wide variance in |
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to persuade me that it’s a good time to travel. Given
the exchange rates, I can barely afford imported tagliatelle,
much less a hotel room in Vienna. Luckily I can still shop there.
Earlier this month I took a virtual journey on the Internet
to find European online stores with merchandise, including some
great deals, that allowed me to gawk like a tourist without
having to endure the actual pain of spending, say, $6 for a
cup of coffee. I visited sites like the Alpine clothier Austriastore.at
(which sells embroidered lederhosen and shoes to wear with “casual
dirndls”) and the Italian art-glass seller Artofvenice.com
a merchant with a bricks-and mortar store in Venice right next
to San Zulian Church (at the corner of Calle dei Specchieri
and Calle dei Segretari). And I found that at Europebynet.com
I could save 40 percent on trendy furniture from 90 different
European manufacturers. Like any sightseer I wondered where
to start. To orient myself on unfamiliar terrain, my first instinct
was to travel as I did on my honeymoon, wandering the countryside
in hit-or-miss fashion. That strategy led me serendipitously
to sites like Directart.co.uk, the online arm of the Cranston
Fine Arts shop in Scotland, where I browsed among hundreds of
images of European military prints and paintings, “all
prices quoted in British Sterling”. Among the site’s
best sellers was a large print by Charles Fripp of the “Battle
of Isandhlwana.” a chaotic scene detailing the “
last stand of the 24th Regiment of Foot (South Wales Borderers)
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during the Zulu War”. Which cost 42 pounds, plus another
15 pounds to ship. (A quick trip to XE. Com to use the currency
converter tool translated the total to $104. Other travellers
might prefer to use a guidebook. Search sites like Keikoo.com,
Shopsonthenet.com and Shopping.com’s new French site,
Fr.shopping.com, list thousands of European online stores for
those who have a specific itinerary. “On our French site
we categorize merchandize differently because, for instance,
in France lingerie and perfume are much bigger deals, so we
highlight those as categories on the left side of the page,
“ said Shannon Clouston, Shopping.com’s chief shopper.
“We’re launching in Germany later this year, and
they organize their clothing differently, too. In Germany, you
have to have a leggings category.” For American shoppers
the landscape may look decidedly exotic. Shopping.com’s
French site is, for starters, in French. Prices are in euros,
and the site calculates tax and shipping costs to destinations
around the world. Many European sites have no English version:
others have only rough translations. At Pedroxmenez.com, for
example a Spanish site that sells wines from Cordova (“everything
at factory price”), the process of calculating shipping
costs- described under “Mechanism of the Buy On-Line”-
is done “according weigh and destiny of the order, “the
site says. “They come reflected in the form of buy, when
you selected the destiny.” Will the language barrier make
shoppers hesitate? “My instinct tell me that probably
Americans would be reluctant to shop at non-U.S. sites because
there is the issue of trust.” Said Prof. Robert Nickerson,
director of the Center for Electronic Business at the College
of Business at San Fransisco State University. “Even though
we send |
destinations to which sites were willing to ship.Only about
half of the German sites would ship worldwide. Although they
conducted no formal follow-up research, Ms Turberg told me via
e-mail that European e-commerce is increasing, and its Web sites
are beginning to look like American ones. Shopping. Com offers
overseas merchants who want to sell to American shoppers the
option of being included in its American directory. Many of
those merchants ship goods directly from an American distribution
center, she said, including Figleaves.com (a British lingerie
seller), Forzieri.com (an Italian clothing store). “Most
American shoppers aren’t as comfortable shopping overseas,
so it makes more sense for companies to distribute from here,
“Ms Clouston said. I’ve had good luck receiving
orders shipped from Europe in a timely and efficient fashion
at sites like Fromages.com in France and Espadrillestc.com,
an online shoe store in Spain owned by an American. Sites like
Europebynet.com, a furniture seller in England, do a healthy
business with American shoppers because prices are low, said
Julie Edwards, the owner. “We sell 40 percent of our stuff
in the U.S,” she said. Her furniture costs 30 percent
to 40 percent less than it would in American stores because
“we sell at the local market price, not the marked-up
price, “Ms Edwards said. “If something made by an
Italian manufacturer sells in Italy for $100 but sells in the
U.S. for $170, we sell it for $100.” And although shipping
one piece of furniture can be expensive, on a bulk order, the
savings add up. Like my honeymoon, this kind of deal could prove
too cost effective to refuse. |
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