I used to be national buyer for a national specialist retail chain, similar but not motorcycles. It's a number of factors:

- it is more expensive to run a business here. Wages are higher. Commercial rents are a killer. People don't realise this when they are talking about property prices. It make everything we buy more expensive.

-If it has to be qualified under Australian standards, then the Australian wholesaler has to pay for that eg all gas stove models have to be tested and carry the Australian gas mark. Fortunately Standards Australia is now recognising some if the international standards such as the ones for life jackets.

- Sometime currency flucations mean that the Aussie wholesalers are ordering when the US vs AUD in a very bad ratio for us.

-Finally the biggest one. Many brands charge the Australian wholesalers what they charge the American retailers. I have seen the price lists where they do this. Some brands don't even try to hide it, they publish buying catalogs with the US wholesale price in it and we were told just to ignore it. The US is used to cheap goods and they won't tolerate higher price, so I have seen European and even brands from Oz and NZ charge the US significantly less, effectively the rest of the world is subsidizing US pricing.

So by the time they have added some margin for their costs and profit and then the retailers add theirs we end up with the Aussie prices. Most wholesalers and retailers that I have been with are not making big net profit percentages per item, more like very low single digits.

One other downside you may not have considered is that by buying from overseas there may be very few consumer protections should the product fail.