The physically unobtainable becomes obtainable!

  I've been asked by a few people recently where I got some of my gear, and the answer most of the time is Amazon and to a much lesser extent eBay, but the obvious problem with this is that most places will not ship electronics to New Zealand. This is where YouShop comes in.

Click to visit the YouShop site

  In an era where mail is in decline, it's still required when shipping physical items, until teleportation is finally invented, and more often than not the grass is much greener on the other side of the world. Being in such a comparatively small Country, many items are simply not released here and we don't have a saturated market like many other Countries. Sadly this means that some items always seem unobtainable, as either the brand isn't locally known, or our market just too small, or in other cases, as with the Atomos Ninja, local distributors hike up the price to often double the American price and with the exchange rate so good at the moment it simply doesn't make sense.

  NZ Post have set up depots in the US and the UK for re-shipping and distribution to New Zealand and having used the service a few times now, it truly is brilliant! The service is called YouShop, and it's free to set up. They'll even go as far as to open your packages and combine the content if it will decrease the shipping costs (if requested).

  Cameras and camera gear is now that much easier to obtain, and it would seem worth the wait. Having so far used the US depot for another Kodak Zx5, and now just having used the UK depot for an Atomos Ninja purchased on eBay UK, I find myself looking more at international sites than local sites for sourcing gear or just dreaming of ownership and lamenting my bank account.

  It's intelligent solutions like YouShop, that work to make the world a smaller place and dreams of more gear a reality. It's a service really worth considering and definitely using. Considering NZ Post announced last year that the decline in postage is forcing them to make serious changes and reduce delivery services, it's the additional services they provide which will hopefully keep them afloat.

Cheers NZ Post.