A question we hear often is: "Will you ship computers to my country someday?"
For the first four years of business we shipped internationally to a very long list of countries. We greatly enjoyed shipping out computers and having people rave about how "I was not able to find a computer this good at any store in _______ (name of country)". We greatly enjoyed supporting the world at large. Free and open software does not have borders; we wanted the hardware to be more open too.
But we have found with every legitimate order, there are dozens of illegitimate orders. We have excellent devs on the team who have helped fight the fraud, but it was costing us money to do this. And that money has to come from somewhere.
So, we are shifting focus. We are letting our Berkeley, California shop handle all US and Canada orders. As quickly as we possibly can we are working on setting up similar shops in other countries. The next few on the list, in order, are New Zealand, Canada, and Italy. All other countries are in queue, coming as quickly as we can build the resources to do it.
We have given this question a lot of thought. We have two goals that we can not compromise:
1. Quality builds
2. Intense R&D
The international issues were pulling us away from both. By setting up a little shop in your country we will be able to maintain our core without compromise.
For now, there are several ways you can voice your opinion about this:
1. Go to our forums and let us know what you think:
http://www.zareason.com/forums/
The International questions are in the "Building the Community" section.
2. If you wish your message to be private, email us at:
orders@zareason.com
3. Tell your friends, colleagues and acquaintances about us. There are many, many countries that have shown a strong interest in having a ZaReason shop in-country. With enough support and energy we will be building optimized for Linux only computers in your country soon too.
Our sincerest thanks for your energy, your understanding, and your support.
