European shoppers already have access to Monoprice’s budget-friendly electronics, but they have to use the U.S. site to make their purchases.
The consumer electronics retailer, based in California, is launching localized sites for the United Kingdom, followed by Germany, Italy, Spain and Switzerland. The localization process will include updating the language and currency of each site. Monoprice’s U.K. site will be the first to launch in coming weeks. The others are planned to launch by the end of the year.
“This approach signifies a strong commitment to European consumers and ensures orders have inexpensive shipping and faster delivery directly to customers’ doors, with no hold ups at customs and no surprise fees,” the company said Sept. 1 in announcing the expansion.
Monoprice is No. 211 in the Internet Retailer 2017 Top 500 Guide and No. 542 in the Internet Retailer 2017 Global 1000.
“We saw a great increase in the number of customer orders shipping to Europe on our U.S. site, especially with the explosive growth of our 3-D printers, and knew we needed to respond to meet demand,” a company spokeswoman says.
Monoprice will launch the sites with inventory of the company’s best-selling items, including its 3-D printers and its Monolith line of headphones. The company says it will continue to update its products on a country-by-country basis as demand dictates.
“At launch, we will start with a curated selection of our best-selling products in the U.S. that are also popular with Europeans,” the spokeswoman says. “We will continue to grow the catalog with the appropriate products as each localized Monoprice website will be customized to fit the needs and shopping habits of its local customers.”
As part of its long-term European strategy, Monoprice hopes to open a European shipping facility to serve customers in the region. However, the company currently works with local fulfillment centers to ship orders to customers in Europe.
Monoprice CEO Bernard Luthi previously served as the senior vice president of marketing, merchandising and web management for Newegg.com and has a history in the electronics retailing business.
Newegg (No. 21 in the Top 500), offers several localized sites, including in countries where Monoprice is expanding. Newegg also has localized sites in South Korea, Australia, Ecuador, Hungary and others.
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