European Audiogon?


We are asking all Audiogon members who are located in Europe or transplanted Europeans to offer their opinion as to the desirability and or viability of starting a European Audiogon. The question foremost in our minds is whether this should be a separate site or an adjunct to the existing Audiogon. For instance at our existing site one might click on a national flag to see a translation and separate listings for the EU. Which languages would be appropriate to add? Are we missing a significant group of audiophiles by being English only? How much of an advantage is it to just ship within the EU? These are just a sampling of questions. We are confident that the Europeans out there can and will take us to school on this subject. Our thanks in advance to all who take their time to share their knowledge and opinions with us.

Showing 3 responses by restock

I would like to put in a vote for English as main language as well. However I have to agree with Nrchy, there are a lot of audiophiles (in particular older ones, no offense please) that might not be able to converse very well in English.

Also some markets, e.g. Germany, Austria, have already several forums in their native language (TNT for Reviews in Italian, http://www.highendmarkt.de/ and www.ebay.de for used products in Germany, http://www.hifi-forum.de/ for an audioasylum like forum in Germany). However I have not found any that are as good and or as popular as Audiogon here.

To my knowledge there's no european wide forum yet which crosses borders. However something like that might have to be in English to bring all people together under one roof. For now an adjunct site should be good enough.

If you consider different languages, the minimum would be German, French, Italian, Spanish. Quite an undertaking you are planning here. Maybe just the possibility of translation is good enough.

As with respect to shipping and the used market, a division into countries would certainly be useful.

Meine zwei Pfennige...

Otherwise: Good Luck!!

Disclaimer: Originally from Germany I have been living in the US for more than seven years. I'm certainly no expert on the european market.
Good idea Raquel: An additional field in the for sale ads for the nominal voltage would certainly help when expanding Audiogon to the worldwide market.
Maybe all that is required are some additional fields for origin, voltage, language and a better search engine that does better conditional searches than the current one.
Also if the intention is to include Europe, why not the whole world as others here have already suggested. The serial numbers might help to supress the illegal and harmful gray market items.
Now that I live in Canada, I realize how limited the search features on Agon for countries outside the US are. Addtitional fields for sellers to include the state (province), city, zip, and country would be very helpful in locating items without asking the seller. Sometimes I would love to do a search based on province, jut to see what items are available close by.

A completely separate Agon is still not necessary; everyone should be able to access the whole market at a single view, but a more differentiated search featureaccording to location would be great.