Amazon launches outdoor and garden range

Amazon, banking on the weekend warrior set being as susceptible to the convenience of home delivery as any other consumer group, has now entered the garden and outdoor category.

The online retailer, which launched in Australia in 2017, has continued to expand its offer over the past two years, and now offers more than 125 million products.

It launched a new range of garden and outdoor products on Tuesday.

“Our new Garden store has a range of enticing outdoor products from gardening equipment to pool supplies to patio furniture to BBQs,” Rocco Braeuniger, country manager of Amazon Australia, said in a statement.

This puts the e-commerce giant in direct competition with major brick-and-mortar retailers, including Bunnings and Barbeques Galore, which offer similar products through their national store networks, as well as online stores.

“We’ve been competing with a wide range of retailers across a broad spectrum of categories and products for a long time and we always welcome competition,” Mike Schneider, Bunnings’ managing director said.

“While we don’t comment on our competitors, our focus is always on our customer.”

While Bunnings only started selling online in select areas in June 2018, it expects to have a full e-commerce offer in Australia by Christmas 2019.

At the same time, it’s investing heavily into its click-and-collect offer, having conducted research internally that shows most consumers prefer to buy online and pick-up in-store, rather than have it delivered to their home.

“Having our team of experts in-store means we are also able to offer great service to run alongside our online transaction capability and we typically find that many of our online customers like to head into the store to pick their items up,” Schneider said.