At Sharper Image, foreign-based facilities assist global fulfillment
For the Sharper Image Corp., which maintains 10 web sites for foreign markets, placing some of its fulfillment facilities outside the U.S. is a key to customer service, says president and COO Tracy Wan.
Outside of the U.S., the strongest online markets for Sharper Image`s electronics and giftware products are in Europe and Canada. To make it easy for foreign customers to return goods, it maintains a range of foreign-based facilities and arrangements for accepting returns locally. In Canada, it maintains a Canadian center for accepting returns from Canadian shoppers. In the U.K., it accepts returns locally under an agreement with Harrods department stores, where consumers can also buy some Sharper Image items directly.
In Europe, it operates a full-fledged distribution center in Rotterdam, Netherlands, which handles deliveries and returns for European customers.
In addition, Sharper Image has modified its online checkout system to accommodate longer European addresses with additional data entry windows. And to make it easy for European shoppers to figure how much they have to pay in value-added taxes charged by their home countries, Sharper Image uses proprietary software to pre-figure the VAT charged for each purchase and then include the VAT in the customer`s final price.
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