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Amazon Australia launch plans remain under wraps

Edit – 30 November 2017: News site LifeHacker has shared that Amazon’s failure to launch may have been due to a glitch in the software used to apply goods and services tax (GST), as announced by Jason Mahoney, Managing Director – ANZ of market research firm Kantar Retail.
Following months of speculation about Amazon’s intentions to launch a local presence in Australia, and months of subsequent speculation about the logistics of the move once the company had confirmed its Down Under aspirations, the latest speculation revolves around the launch date for the e-commerce company’s local website.
Email correspondence with retailers leaked last week revealed a soft launch planned for Thursday afternoon, suggesting a Black Friday rollout could be imminent. Alas, reports emerged on Friday from retailers revealing that the soft launch had in fact not gone ahead, prompting speculation that Amazon had purposefully sent the email to prompt local retailers into promoting their own Black Friday discount offers.
News site Tamebay has offered its own thoughts on the likely timeline for Amazon’s Australian expansion, surmising that a pre-Christmas unveiling looks likely, and a Black Friday launch was never on the cards. “The last thing that Amazon would have wanted would be the extra pressure of running thousands of Black Friday deals and having their brand new warehouse staff (many of whom will still be being trained) for their first day’s trading,” the site wrote.
We’ll be watching keenly for developments, and are excited to make a purchase once the full site is up and running – to test its fulfilment and delivery capabilities, of course.

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