Check out this report in The Sydney Morning Herald about fashion retailer Asos coming to Australia. On the one hand fashion retailers have tough economic conditions and nervous consumers and on the other they have extraordinarily successful retailers, offline and online, from overseas taking on our marketplace. I mention this because we think that our tiny retail patch is tough … I wouldn’t be a fashion retailer for quids.
I’m not sure if anyone saw the article in the Fin Review on the previous to last weekend about video stores who are really doing it tough. I think from memory the main respondent in the article was from Video Easy and he was saying that they plan to close 200 of their stores in the coming year. HAving said that they were looking at alternate methods of doing things such as 24 hour DvD rental machines that could be placed on and off site of existing stores.
Was a very interesting read and one of the main points was made that the video stores that remain will have to adapt their businesses at a hurried rate. Plenty of lessons to learn !
How tough is it out there? We just found out that a local K Mart is closing
I would think that the any of the bigger stores may suffer with even a small incremental drop in sales due to generally higher overheads which don’t always scale out in an equivalent way to smaller businesses.
Is it closing completely or just relocating ? Might just be a convenient time consolidate a couple of stores perhaps ?
Like anything it could just be situational.
I like your answer Paul. We have to be
pro-active but we mustn’t allow ourselves
to indulge in doom and gloom all the time
Thanks June !
I guess I’m just more a glass half full type of person in general. If you sit there and look at all the bad you miss the opportunity presented by the good. There’s plenty we can do and I think there’s generally a very positive vein of response with alot of people on this blog. While I’m lucky to be trading up on same month to last year a couple of my departments are struggling but thanks to Marks blogging and the responses from different people at different times to his posts I’ve picked up Brown Trout calendars for this year, am in the process of adding printer cartridges with an online presence in the works as well as a further diversification of product lines very distant from a traditional newsagency core line.
Heck, I’m even starting to think about looking at Newsxpress ! (Sssshh..don’t tell Mark ! =)