Business pioneer Timothy Eaton revolutionized the retail industry in 1884, when his two-year-old department store in Toronto introduced a catalogue-based mail-
order service across Canada.

For the first time, consumers in even tiny towns were offered a huge variety of goods at a fixed price, with a money-back guarantee and delivery to their doorstep. Eaton was almost a decade ahead of Richard Sears and his Sears Roebuck and Co. catalogue.

Zoom ahead about 110 years and you come to the mid-1990s, the dawn of the home computer with an Internet/World Wide Web connection. The Internet has evolved to the point that if you want to buy something now, the entire world is an online catalogue.

Advisors who need to rearm themselves with the latest high-tech machinery for work and home should check out the deals in cyberspace before they rush out to the nearest box store. Here are some useful Web sites:



Insight Canada

www.insight.ca

Many advisors may not be aware of the Montreal-based subsidiary of the Arizona powerhouse, but Nasdaq-listed Insight does more than US$3.5 billion a year in sales of high-tech products and services in Canada, the U.S. and Britain.

Insight Canada’s customers are primarily small and medium-sized companies, but individual purchasers can also visit its Web site. Insight Canada sells everything from entire computer networks and servers to desktop, laptop and notebook computers, PDAs, software, printers and monitors.

The company offers more than 200,000 brand name products, the largest selection in the industry and somewhat more than you’ll find at the local shopping mall. Purchases can be bought, financed or leased, and the company brags about its customer service and support, which is vital to advisors in smaller shops who don’t have full-time technicians down the hall.

The Web site is well designed and easy to use, particularly if you have a specific product in mind. If you want to snoop around and compare some items against one another, take the “search tutorial.” It appears on the upper left-hand corner of pages once you scroll along the menu on the top of the home page and pick a category such as “brand names,” “systems,” “hardware” or “software.”

Even a basic search on your first visit is straightforward. If you’re looking for a new computer, for example, on the home page, click on “systems” and then “desktops” or “notebooks.” Hundreds of items will appear, and you can sort the list by top sellers, price or manufacturer. You can even pit many products against one another by putting a check mark next to them and then clicking “compare.”

There’s lots of variety. A quick search of notebook computers shows prices ranging as high as $6,715 for a Lenovo IBM T42P ThinkPad down to $434 for a no-name bare-bones laptop.

If you want to make a purchase, just open an online account and place your order. Everything is shipped to you by UPS or Purolator; the “help” button at the far right-hand side of the home page offers shipping rates and a list of answers to frequently asked questions.



Tiger Direct

www.tigerdirect.ca

Direct selling via the Web keeps a company’s retail costs razor-thin and allows the firm to pass savings along to online clients. The concept quickly made Amazon.com a major force in the book business, and it seems to work out well for Tiger Direct, the Canadian subsidiary of NYSE-listed Systemax Inc.

Markham, Ont.-based Tiger Direct has three nondescript stores in the Toronto area, but the majority of its business is done on the Web. The company mimics the approach of its parent, offering direct marketing of both brand name and private-label high-tech items. The inventory has grown to more than 40,000 products, and Systemax sales passed the US$2 billion mark in 2005.

The massive Web site is reminiscent of an automobile dealership. There is a showroom of finished models that are ready to ship to the casual computer user, as well as a huge “parts department” that lets people who have the high-tech knowledge beef up or customize their computers and other electronic products.

The prices are good as well. If you are planning to buy almost any electronic equipment — including desktop or laptop computer systems, monitors, cellphones, printers, digital cameras, PDAs, flat-screen TVs, MP3 players — it is worth your while to check out the Tiger site first.

@page_break@The Web site itself is a huge catalogue. An extensive list of product categories runs down the entire left-hand side of the home page, with the remainder dedicated to what Tiger calls “the greatest selection of computer deals anywhere.”

The search function lets the shopper find an item by category, manufacturer or price. A basic search for “PDA,” for example, will offer three rows of results, each of which can be rearranged according to different criteria. There are almost 60 manufacturers of PDAs or PDA accessories, so the ability to narrow down the lists is very handy.

Another big plus — one that’s starting to appear on some other retail Web sites — is a rebate centre that shoppers can use to find all existing discounts by product category or brand name. The (largely mail-in) rebates vary from up to $200 cash to free perks or future discounts from the manufacturer.

There is much more to see on the site. As well, if you plan to make a number of high-tech purchases over the coming months, sign up for Tiger Direct’s “snail mail” catalogue or its regular e-mail report of sales and specials. IE



If you have a Web site to share with IE readers, e-mail Glenn Flanagan at gflanagan@sympatico.ca.