Apparels become costly for Australian online shoppers

14 May '12

2 min read

Australian consumers, who prefer to purchase products of global clothing brands online, owing to the items being offered at discounts of up to 50 percent of retail price, are now likely to lose the advantage and might end-up paying the same price online as they might pay at any retail store.

It is because an increasing number of Australian importers are entering into agreements with global apparel brands for either hiking the prices of their garments for purchase through their online portals or for completely putting a break on selling their clothes online to Australian consumers.

This would benefit Australia's ailing retail industry, but would disappoint online shoppers who may not be able to get discounts of up to 50 percent for buying overseas labels, as earlier.

The distributors, who have exclusive rights to market and sell global apparel brands in Australia, say they are forced to enter into such agreements with the international brands in view of the Government's reluctance to reduce the Au$ 1,000 GST-free threshold for imported goods.

Some of the recent deals are aimed at preventing the sale of items of global clothing brands to Australians on both the brand's online website as well as other portals like Amazon with which they have a tie-up.

Australian importers say if they do not enter into such deals, large number of consumers will resort to buying goods online, resulting in a loss of business to them. Some of the firms are increasing the price of their clothing items for shipping to Australia so as to bring their online price at par with the price at retail stores.

Preventing websites from selling garments to Australian consumers is being considered as the best solution at the moment to halt the flow of sales from going to other countries.

For international brands, which resort to such steps on the behest of Australian importers and distributors, it helps them in two ways – protecting the integrity of the brand by being sold at similar price through both online and retail channels, and supporting the retailers who have sold the brand's products in the market for several years.

Fibre2fashion News Desk - India

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