Macy’s department store has marketed itself for a long time as THE shopping place to be for US visitors. Macy’s provides a savings card that has a ten percent discount for the foreign shoppers, customized plans for travel agents and tour groups, and tourism site which lists advised hotels and shopping events close to the store’s flagship locations.
However, just last year, Macys.com — that shopper’s around the world could check out — provided overseas shipping.
Macy’s includes one of multiple retailers attempting to grow its international business to its Internet operations by way of overseas shipping. Within the past year, Lane Bryant, Crate and Barrel, Aeropostale, J. Crew, and Williams-Sonoma added shipping internationally to their sites, whereas Neiman Marcus and Ann Taylor are still considering it.
A few of the retailers are meeting anticipated or existing overseas demand, whereas other retailers are testing the waters prior to opening shops within additional countries. Either way, they’re finding that shipping beyond the US isn’t an easy undertaking.
There does exist a few issues with postal fees, customs and ordering systems. For instance, many retailers don’t possess software within their warehouse management systems which recognizes the foreign postal codes that — unlike the ones in the US — don’t always possess 5 digits.
It seems as if it’s a poor excuse not to internationally sell, but a lot of retailers claim that this is their largest roadblock.
The attraction to reach consumers in additional countries is based greatly upon the trend of overseas smart phone sales. Research predicts Internet retail sales within Latin America, Asia Pacific and Western Europe to increase sixty-seven percent from now until 2015, as compared to forty-two percent for the US.
Plus, traffic to US sites from international visitors is high already. According to studies from Comscore.com, last December, fourteen percent of visitors to jcrew.com derived from outside of the US, as were thirty-six percent of consumers to abercrombie.com.
