Online retailer Newegg to expand to Singapore by end of this month

Online retailer Newegg announced plans to expand its operations to include Singapore by end of this month at its roundtable panel on the final day of Computex 2014. After an unsuccessful attempt at expanding to Asia (Newegg's Malaysia operations wrapped up in December last year), Newegg is giving it a second try.

Other than Singapore, Newegg also plans to move into India, as well as four other countries - Ireland, Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland. To cater to these new markets, the 13-year-old site will include localization features such as translation into native languages. Newegg currently operates in four countries - USA, Canada, United Kingdom and Australia.

At the roundtable panel, Newegg also showed off some impressive figures to justify the expansion. According to them, there was a year on year growth of 90 percent for portable gaming laptops, while the sale of PCs have increased more than 51 percent from last year. The company also sees great potential in gaming and e-sports and wants to “take advantage” of this trend.

Newegg is known for supplying computer components and other electronic products at competitive prices and currently boasts a database of more than 25 million registered users and more than 10.5 million products. The products sold range from PC parts to consumer electronics to health and fitness products. There is even a category for baby- and pet-related supplies.

At this moment, it is unknown if there will be any mark up in prices for the Singapore site, as with most IT products sold here. If there isn't, it would mean serious competition in the local market. For example, a Samsung 840 EVO mSATA 250GB SSD was on sale for S$249 (UP: S$289) recently. Newegg (US site) has them going for US$168.99 (about S$211) before adding shipping costs. The lure of being able to shop in the comfort of your own home at hard-to-beat prices sure is something we look forward to, but at this point of time, we cannot yet confirm how the products will be priced for the local market.

Source: CNET