This startup allows you to buy almost anything from across 9 countries – at a far cheaper price

These days, you can buy literally everything and anything online. From praying mantis eggs to a flamethrower on Amazon, there seems to be no limit to what your hard-earned dollars can get you. It’s a perfect ecommerce world out there – or is it?

Xin-Lung Tai, CEO of Melbourne-based ecommerce platform ShopandBox, doesn’t think so. Having spent a large part of his life traveling to and from countries such as the United Kingdom, Malaysia, Australia, and Singapore, he has identified two major problems with ecommerce today: price discrimination and item availability.

Price discrimination occurs when retailers around the world price identical items differently – often, quite a significant amount. Some items are also not available in certain countries.

He’s right on both counts. Contrary to popular belief, while Amazon seems to sell everything and anything, not all of it is readily available for purchase outside of the US. For example, Kindle products, such as the tablet and books, cannot be easily purchased in Singapore. Buyers are forced to go through a lengthy process of registering a US postal address, topping up a gift card, and then finally using a VPN to download their desired books.

This is but one case. Tai offers the example of the LG G Smart Watch which was not released in Malaysia, but can be bought in other countries such as Japan and Singapore.

The price difference across country borders can be astonishing, too. “A Coach bag, for example, would have cost S$1,295 in Singapore, as compared to US$648 in the US,” Tai says, citing an example of a transaction in progress on ShopandBox. US$648 translates to S$802, which is still a significant amount of saving made.

Buy anything, anywhere, cheaper

ShopandBox is his solution to these problems. In a nutshell, the team’s mission is to enable shoppers to be able to buy items that are either unavailable in their country, or are far more expensive even if they are available.

They can do this with the help of personal shoppers called Boxers, who are locals in the countries that they are looking to buy items from. These Boxers are what differentiate ShopandBox from the run-of-the-mill blogshop and forum mass orders, says Tai:

ShopandBox is different from anything else there is out there as you always deal with a real person who acts as your personal shopper from start to finish. You tell them what you want, where it is from, and they do all the purchasing, consolidating, packaging and shipping of items right to your door step – peer-to-peer shopping, in other words […] Simply put, ShopandBox puts the power into the hands of the consumer.

In addition, he also emphasizes that all communication between buyer and Boxer is transparent – everything happens on the message board, which can be found at the bottom of the order page. This helps safeguard both parties’ interests.

“All communications, price points, and finer details are centralised on our order page,” Tai adds. “It’s a personalized experience, and most importantly, you’re not at the mercy of the price and item selection of the person organising the order.”

On the shoulders of Boxers