A Little Advice....

[made-in-colorado!]

   We have a nice little wholesale biz here in Colorado USA.  You can see a few of our listings to see what we sell here...  We also produce many other customized souvenir type products for tourists.

   We are considering moving to Australia and would like to open a gift shop plus sell on Ebay down there.  We are curious about how popular Ebay is there. Are most sales to Australians or are most of you selling internationally?

   Thanks In Advance!!!!

[chuk_77]

Adelaide is so cheap compared to Melbourne and Sydney

[made-in-colorado!]

If average homes cost 1 million, what the heck does everyone do for a living there?  Does everyone make $100 an hour?

[cq_tech]

Median prices for average 3br suburban homes in most capital cities is nowhere near $1m, despite many costing that, or much more.

As a rough guide, brand new homes and land in the outer suburbs of the capital cities start at around $250k, while you can pick up homes in isolated rural areas for as little as $100k (or even less).

Last I heard, the average individual Australian income was around $730 per week, and interest rates for home mortgages is around the 6% mark.

[made-in-colorado!]

Those numbers we can handle!

[leader-of-the-band]

I live in a $1 million dollar home!  Problem is . . . . . . it is not located in Sydney . . . . . so it is worth way way less, probably less than 1/3 that.

Living in the country is affordable in so many ways.  I couldn't afford to live in Sydney, the mortgage I would need would drown me.

[superscanner4]

http://au.news.yahoo.com/thewest/business/a/-/national/16031170/house-prices-jump-in-december-quarte...

Most Australians prefer to buy locally made products where possible.  We do have trade shows for the gift shop industry; and also craft shows for the public.  There was a national Australian Craft Show which showcased the very best of Australian and New Zealand handcrafts (I used to do my Christmas gift shopping there!) but sadly this came to an end due to management disputes. I believe the cost of a stall there became prohibitive and many stallholders complained about the poor management and lack of publicity for the high cost they were paying. 

In major cities the cost of stalls at these shows is expensive.  So for people who are making crafts on a small scale the most cost effective way to sell them is at weekend craft markets.  These are increasingly popular with both sellers and buyers, it cuts out the middle man.  Mind you it's a labour of love, you are sitting around all day (usually outdoors).

[made-in-colorado!]

    We try to balance our retail, wholesale, online and offline sales.  The economy in the US is terrible so most of our wholesale accounts are selling to foreign tourists.  They have the money and spend it freely. Of course many of them are on once in a lifetime vacations...

    Ebay here is like an online flea market these days. People here will win an auction they ask to wait a week to pay or worse, they try to negotiate the price after winning!    It's maddening....

[the-kazbar]

As a rough guide, brand new homes and land in the outer suburbs of the capital cities start at around $250k, while you can pick up homes in isolated rural areas for as little as $100k (or even less).

If the OP is going to cater to the tourist crowd they will need to be located near the tourists which takes out anything in a isolated rural area, and as most of the major tourist areas are coastal they are not going to get anything close to $250K.

[made-in-colorado!]

Let me ask this question then....  If you could live anywhere in Australia, where would it be?  We are not keen on big cities and would not have any reason to live in one or even close to one.   We would have no problem traveling around to get our initial orders from retailers. We would then simply ship re-orders to them.  That's what we do now...

   My perfect plan would be to buy a nice boat and live on it. That's what we did in San Diego for a few years and it was incredible!  I doubt the wife would be "on board" to that idea.....  I might could sell her on the idea for a year or so!

[the-kazbar]

Personally I would live on the North Coast of NSW but you would need to cover thousands of miles to travel to the busier areas for orders and the capital cities for trade fairs. You would also have higher freight costs from there for both receiving your deliveries and sending out your orders