MELBOURNE-BASED Ruslan Kogan, the founder of the Australian-based consumer electronics company Kogan Technologies, is branching out to the US market and says his buying power will increase by over 1000 per cent in doing so.
At a press briefing last week Mr Kogan showed off some of his latest products and announced that he was ready to open a warehouse in the US State of Kentucky.
There’s some good news for his Australian customers too, he says.
Analysis done by Kogan Technologies in regards to Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) indicates that any search term in Australia like LCD TV or Blu-ray, for example, the US are searching 25 per cent more.
“As soon as we go to the UK our US and Aussie customers will benefit,” he said.
One issue Kogan will face with getting into the US market is getting his SEO and branding right.
As Kogan doesn’t own the domain name Kogan.com it’s likely he’s going to have to purchase it from its owner Tucows Inc, an internet services company.
However, Tucows owned the domain name ten years prior to Kogan and have refused to hand it over even though Kogan says they are breaching his trademark.
“Our lawyers are onto it,” he said. “It was secured ten years before we came into the marketplace and we’ve had some interesting conversations with them recently because they are actually passing off on the Kogan trademark,” he added. “If you go to Kogan.com they’re advertising LCD TVs, GPS’s and Digital photo frames.”
Kogan remains confident in getting the domain name.
“We’re trying, but we’ll get there,” he said
The young entrepreneur has been undercutting the Australian market for quite some time now and says he can do it by taking out the middleman.
“The fact that containers (are) direct to here, straight to customers, none of the overheads the other companies have (and) an efficient business model, a paperless office, things like that,” are all things Mr Kogan says are the reasons he can keep his prices lower than other big name brands.
Kogan will do anything in his power to keep prices at bare minimum, including the removal of paper manuals from products.
“Sony will spend $2 printing each one of their manuals,” he said. “You’re probably not even going to read it.”
“We’ll put it online.”
When asked why he chose Kentucky he said it was mathematically the right choice.
“There’s been a lot of maths done and that’s the central point…because it’s cheaper to distribute to the rest of America.”
When commenting on his launch in America he said it was much more easier than launching in Australia because of “stupid” Australian Government standards.
“Launching into America is even easier than Australia because our government was stupid enough to select a digital TV standard that none of the world uses,” he added.
“Our TVs are more expensive to manufacture already because the manufacturing process can only be used for Australia.”
The launch of the US warehouse will also see the launch of his pro-range of LCD TVs.
“The ones with (a) built-in DVD player, USB drive and SD card,” Kogan said.
Kogan re-affirmed that once he secures the US market it’ll have a great impact on Australian prices.
“When our buying power grows to that magnitude, our Aussie customers are going to benefit because that is going to drop our prices.”
Flickr user edwin.11
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