Xiaomi announced on its Facebook page that the company is opening a "beta" accessory store in the U.S. at 7 p.m. PDT. The Mi.com online store will cater to customers from the U.S., UK, France and Germany.
The store will sell Xiaomi's popular accessories, which include items such as power packs, the Mi Band wearable and Mi Headphones selling for $79.99. However, the company said the newly opened store will not include smartphones and other gadgets in the lineup.
Since it is a new site, the company posted a "Mi Buying Guide" on Facebook in order to help potential buyers become familiar with the sales processes. According to the post, buyers would have to "log in early before the sale starts." The advice was given probably because the company is known for launching new handsets that usually sell out after only a few minutes of becoming available.
Customers also have to know that the company has set up certain limits on the number of items they can purchase on the site. These include the power banks and fitness band. Customers are limited to purchasing only two and no more than that. The headphones, on the other hand, are limited to just one unit per customer. While the company accepts major credit cards, the most preferred payment method seems to be PayPal.
The launch of the new online retail site marks the company's first huge step in bringing its products to the West. So far, it has already earned quite a following when it began to offer its affordable handsets to customers from emerging markets such as India and, of course, its homeland China. The company also plans to sell its successful lineup of handsets in Brazil for the next couple of months.
According to the site, the 10,400mAh Mi Power Bank is retailed at $14 while the 5,000mAh Mi Power Bank is sold for $10. The Mi Band activity tracker is also sold at the cheap price of $15.
Excluding their products on the site such as the smartphones may have been a well-thought of decision by the company. The reason could have revolved around potential legal and patent issues. Xiaomi's handsets had been compared to Apple's numerous times in the past in terms of design, quality and even performance. Some comparisons even sounded a bit harsh for the company when critics called its Mi 4 smartphone an iPhone copycat last year.
However, smartphones are not the only products that are keeping the company quite busy and popular among customers. Xiaomi also sells a smart television known as the MiTV, a MiWiFi network router and a GoPro-like wearable camera.
For a store to have just opened on its first day of business, it may be easy to understand why there are only a few products that are initially available for retail. Customers will just have to keep themselves posted with products to be added to the site in the future.
