Forum Archive Index - December 2003

["tennyson@caverock.net.nz" <tennyson@caverock.net.nz>]

Hi David,
 
> 
> Successful NZ businesses should not automatically think the next
>step is Australia simply because of it`s vastly larger market
>size . The market may be  bigger,  but there is, to balance, 
> proportionately greater and perhaps more street-wise competition.
>

So what is the alternative for WHS?    Start opening stores in Canada?  
I imagine competition is alive and well there too!   Start a supermarket 
chain in NZ?    Foodstuffs and Foodland are no pushover competitors.

Move into other areas of the retail market like real estate or the 
automobile market?  There is a fair amount of competition there too!

Where do you think the WHS should go, if not into Australia and 
'general merchandising'?

> 
> 
>In an expansionary  move abroad there are at least two challenges-
> 
>(1)  Ask yourself why the heck you as a newcomer on the block
> should think that you can offer something special to turn around a
>failing business .
>

Logistical systems, scale (merging two existing chains) and street 
fighter cunning.

>
>Don`t think that there are not enough local
>competitors , already familiar with the local scene , that won`t
>have sized up the challenge before you did and walked away. 
>

Isn't that the universal excuse never to do anything?

>
>(2) The second challenge is - how do you evaluate, before committing
>yourself to a move -- in the particular industry, what would be the
>Aussie parochialism against a NZ newcomer ?  
>

>From what I hear WHS employ Australians in Australia and don't make 
a big deal about their shop's kiwi identity.    After all, until recently 
Farmers in NZ was Aussie owned.   I haven't observed a sudden rush 
of customers to the doors just because it has reverted to NZ 
ownership!

>
>Yet somehow Lion over time whittled away that brand loyalty.
>Well Done Lion ! But somehow I suspect you were a rare
> exception.
> 

No they didn't.  They bet big by buying an existing business.  I notice 
that Gaynor did not chastise LNN for being foolish in his Herald article!

>
>The Warehouse by contrast has had a relatively push-over march
> to success in NZ . 
>

I would hardly call Woolworths Variety (that became Deka) and K mart 
'pushovers'.    They may look weak compared to WHS now, but that 
was hardly my memory of the situation in the mid eighties to mid 
nineties when WHS was growing.

>
>It had a unique,until then,  formula. Part
>of it`s philosophy ,wittingly or not, to supplant the small
>business - though callous, is a unique factor in it`s success
>story. 
> 

I have never heard WHS articulate that philosophy.   I know that in 
some towns that is the perception of what happened, but is there any 
real evidence for your statement?    Or have I just been suckered in by 
Tindall's claims that the arrival of WHS does not mean the death of 
small town New Zealand mainstreets.

SNOOPY

discl: hold WHS






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