Aramex launched Shop and Ship (www.shopandship.com) in 2000 after identifying that consumers in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) were cut off from the benefits of purchasing items from online stores in the USA because those stores do not offer delivery to the MENA countries.
In response to this demand, Aramex opened the New York processing facility. By doing so, the Aramex MENA consumers, once registered with Shop and Ship, were given the delivery address of the Aramex New York facility to use as their forwarding address when purchasing items on USA websites.
By providing this service and giving registered customers the Aramex New York delivery address, consumers were able to send their purchased USA online parcels to the Aramex New York facility. Here, Aramex would recognize their home address and unique mailbox number and send the parcel out directly, to the consumer, through the Aramex International Express network.
Essentially, online stores in the USA believe they are delivering these packages to people in the Aramex New York facility, but in fact, the parcels will be re-labelled with an Aramex waybill and shipped to consumers in the MENA countries.
The product proved very successful and is now sold in over 50 countries worldwide.
Aramex Global Shopper was launched in South Africa in 2014. The name of the service differs to the other counties around the world because of a copyright issue where a company owned the rights to the www.shopandship.co.za domain and for that reason, the product had to be renamed in South Africa from Shop and Ship to Aramex Global Shopper. All the processes and systems remain the same as Shop and Ship, but it is known as AGS (Aramex Global Shopper) in South Africa, Namibia and Botswana.
The AGS service is used strictly for importing of parcels from online retailers, designed to make global online shopping more convenient and accessible to consumers in South Africa. Therefore, if a consumer is sitting in South Africa, they can only use AGS when buying products online, from online retailers, outside of the country.
Once registered with AGS (www.aramexglobalshopper.com), South African consumers will have access to over 30 countries Aramex Hub addresses. Consumers will also receive a unique Mailbox number. This mailbox number has to be included in Address Line 2 when using your Aramex Facility address, as your forwarding address. The consumers unique mailbox number is linked to their South African forwarding address and details and allows for the parcel to be directly delivered to their front door!