US based online retail titan has finally officially launched its first Australian operation.

After a tumultuous few months of will-they/won’t-they, Amazon finally opened its virtual doors to the domestic Australian market.  

While not yet as all-inclusive as its other global marketplaces, the Australian marketplace still covers most of the bases, with 23 separate categories for shoppers to choose from, including computers, consumer electronics, music, clothing, accessories, kitchen goods, baby products, and of course, books. 

Amazon started taking orders and shipping products from its newly built warehouse in the city of Melbourne, before dawn on Monday this week. 

Long road

It has been a long road for Amazon in Australia. The company confirmed in April it was bringing a full retail offer to Australia, but when, where, and just what the company would be selling, had been anyone’s guess, up until a few weeks ago. As recently as last week, some commentators in the media had reported that the Amazon launch had been delayed until sometime in 2018.   

Australia has been home to Amazon ‘sellers’ for a number of years at this stage, but crucially they could not sell into their own domestic market, and could only send their goods to other countries if they used an Amazon.com address.  

But now Amazon is selling directly within Australia and through its third-party marketplace, which allows other independent businesses to sell through its website.   

East coast

Amazon have based themselves in a massive distribution warehouse on the outskirts of Melbourne city, on the country’s east coast. It’s a sensible move. The country, while occupying roughly the same land mass as the USA, has around one-thirteenth of the company’s population. 

But despite its massive geographical size, almost 80% of Australia’s population lives on the East coast. Consequently, the company hopes to shortly cut delivery times to as little as one day, despite the logistical nightmare. 

$300 billion retail market

Amazon Australia manager, Rocco Braeuniger, said Amazon would be offering “millions” of products from well-known Australian brands as the company enters the $300 billion retail market. 

“By concentrating on providing a great shopping experience and by constantly innovating on behalf of customers, we hope to earn the trust and the custom of Australian shoppers in the years to come.’ 

It’s far cry from 1994, when Jeff Bezos started Amazon from his garage in Seattle. The 53-year-old is now richer than both Warren Buffet and another garage business start-up, Microsoft founder, Bill Gates. Not that Bezos wasn’t already relatively wealthy. Before starting Amazon, he had been a Hedge-fund manager in New York, but his rise is no less impressive for that.