I want to be the parallax distributor in Australia.
whiteoxe
Posts: 794
The current one(name deleted). The website doesn’t work and is not up to date. The inventory is small because I’ve had to wait weeks sometimes in the past for parallax items. Does he order them after he gets an Australian order.
When you click on one of the few item listed, the price is $0.00
Worst website out there IMO
Are there very few Australian customers ?
This is a major pain.
PS. dear parallax, post me a prop plug please ';)
When you click on one of the few item listed, the price is $0.00
Worst website out there IMO
Are there very few Australian customers ?
This is a major pain.
PS. dear parallax, post me a prop plug please ';)
Comments
Is this really a good idea? Do you have capital to invest? Is their enough of a profit to make it worth your while? Can you survive a start up where income might not be able for living expenses for a year or more?
I doubt that Parallax is restricting Australia to just one distributor, and would likely welcome another. But people often buy directly from Parallax instead of a local distributor as Parallax may have inventory items that the distributor cannot afford to carry.
What is going on here seems obvious. The other one went out of business, but the web pages seem to still come up in search engines.
Website isn't great but the service is generally good, including an emergency buying a propscope after hours once
The service is very good, and delivery is variable, but I have not had to wait too long for anything.
My impression is that there are several Prop power-users in Australia, but the promotion and publicity of Parallax products is quite low.
a bit uncommon, Organic Stock Feed Producer Darling Downs Queenslnd
edit: and a decent website
http://www.ausorganicfeeds.com.au/Default.aspx
very first time I have looked at it since I sold it a decade ago, made me sad ;( haaa, life moves on !! at times I had almost 200 grand owing to me, some customers really drag out payments, they don't realize the stess that places on a small business but I guess that was my job., but it can get tricky !!
People could organize big orders together to avoid large shipping cost of individual shipments and share knowledge.
RTN truly offers excellent personal service and has introduced many people to our products. Customers have complained about the RTN web site for many years.
The larger distributors in Oz (Jaycar, Dick Smith) are always options.
As you're an Aussie, what are your suggestions for Parallax?
Ken Gracey
Glad you are here ! The problem is more than the website for sure. Please don't consider dicksmith. It once wa the famous GO-TO shop for all electronic but it gradually slipped so much that it is now a totally different kind of business. It now sells TV's ,Game consoles, e-readerss, phones etc etc. you won't find any resistor's, breadboards, microcontolers or anything of interest to Parallax minded customers.
Jaycar has it all. They are a great chain store with knowlegible staff. They sell a lot of products to get kids interested as well. Jaycar are what DickSmith used to be plus Tandy/radioshack.
If you supported Jaycar your business would treble overnight .
mike.
and they have a fantastic catalogue every year.
Jaycar is the components supplier of choice. Lots of stores and usually have competent employees.
Element 14 and RS are bulk suppliers.
Dick Smith is no longer a component supplier.
Tandy is the same as Dick Smith (and IIRC owned by Dick Smith).
I am not sure of volumes used in Australia. The ones using props that I know of buy from Parallax or DigiKey in quantity. That's what I do.
If the requirement is for small numbers of prop chips and just a few parts, then perhaps one of us on the forum could do it??? But if you want a full-blown store, I doubt there is enough volume to sustain it for any of the companies such as Jaycar.
PS; and prop plugs should be there
Looking in our Aussie hobby electronics magazine (Silicon Chip) at supplier stores advertising spreads you will find Jaycar dominates, followed by Altronics.
Online suppliers with good websites are Ocean Controls, Australian Robotics, Little Bird Electronics, Wiltronics and Robot Gear. I have used most of them and found them to be competent.
Australian Robotics has a specific STEM committment which might interest you.
My personal choice would be a Parallax supply agreement with Jaycar, with a Parallax display spot in the shops.
I think Ive said enough on this thread but I wanted to concur with this latest post. I have too (to) used most of those companies and found them very helpful. But they don’t have stores everywhere like Jaycar does, and I like to wander around Jaycar
PJ, ask Prime Electronics , its a great location
Correction, the destination nations end up subsidizing this through "terminal dues" due to the imbalance created when one nation's shipping far outweighs its receiving. Shipping nation keeps the "postage", receiving nation cops it sweet.
I mentioned setting up a campus representative to do this in student/university populations. But any co-operative buying organization could be a big plus.
My own dilemma is that nobody else in Kaohsiung seems to be interested in Parallax products, but that is not the case elsewhere. Just schedule a quarterly buying schedule.
What do you think about http://www.futurlec.com.au/
They were once recommended to me along with LittleBird Electronics. I found futurelec very good to deal with. Especially when I just wanted a few bits and pieces that were inexpensive. Their postage is very very cheap. They have an Australian office but only a fax number. If you want to query them on something they respond quickly to emails. Obviously they are offshore but I dont see the problem with that.
I just placed a small test order of $20 and the postage was $4.00
So what do you think ?
They can be a little bit slow and expect parts to come from odd places ... like Thailand.
They have a great web site in terms of PDFs for the parts they sell... way above average
They have good postage rates and free if you happen to spend $100. plus you can call them up and chat about what you are trying to do and get good advice,. Ive asked questions like ,"I want to power a couple of 12 volt devices using thre 3.3 volts my MC puts out. and AI get told what i need and how to hook it up , maybe Im in the 1% that needs to be told but they dont mind helping at all.
They ship very fast which is a bonus even if I have to pay $7 instead of $4.00