WHS - Warehouse Group

[winner69]

I feel like many havn’t even looked on themarket.com - it doesn’t just sell The Warehouse group inventory, it is also an aggregator of other non-warehouse owned retailers. For instance I purchased a $360 handbag for my better half on there in November from Saben. The transaction was done on themarket.com, but fulfillment was done directly from the Saben store in Auckland.

How much did WHS get out that I wonder …a commission / cut ……part ofvthe $5m revenue they reported.

Suppose disclosing how many zillions of non-WHS merchandise they sell is commercially sensitive

If it is 10% overall (they tried to screw Jim) then about $50m of sales go through.

[Waltzing]

All the contributors make the case for a company to Short.

[alokdhir]

All the contributors make the case for a company to Short.

If only such voices were made when WHS was over $ 4....now its not much left to short ...lol

[Waltzing]

"not much left to short"


Gotta say that in these dark days of summer sun the ANZAC spirit abounds...

but its still only at 3 dollars...

Mr B says 2.20...that hound has a sixth sense from a lot of hunts...

[Beagle]

Thanks for those valuable contributions Jimdog, gives great insight into how themarket platform "works".

[winner69]

We shouldn’t really be down on Nick and TWG for creating hyper-personalized customer experiences and reimagining ecommerce.

It’ll all work out in due course

Tough job being CEO of such a business

[Waltzing]

mentioned before there maybe problems bringing together all those businesses and the systems.

the question did each business have its own IT infrastructure and how would it all come together into this new experience?

There was some information about that some conversions were happening and some took longer than expected.

It this black hole an IT blow out?

Developing an in house solution for on line commerce is a big gamble.

Perhaps Amazon API did not provide some of the features they required.

REST API's should allow for data to extracted and reprocessed but bringing together all these businesses looks like an IT nightmare.

[Waltzing]

They need to get it ready to float off but that is a whole new nightmare as WHS is still required to fund the develop deficit...

and as MR B says who wants it? finding a potential new corner stone holder?

[LaserEyeKiwi]

Honestly, what they've built in themarket.com is actually a very efficient, sleek and well built website. Credit where credit is due.

The fundamental issue lies in the fact for them to make money from this platform they need other big retailers in NZ to come on board to get the transactional $$ flowing to get the level of commissions they need.

Therein lies the problem. No other retailer wants their customers data to be captured and handled by the warehouse group (albeit themarket).

That's why if you look through the brands there are almost no big competitors to the Whs group, as the Whs group covers quite a large spectrum of retail via its different mastheads.

I believe themarket.com if sold off from the WHS group could actually be profitable, as then other big retailers may be more likely to get onboard.

Whoever came up with the concept of themarket.com i believe underestimate the lack of buy in it would receive due to Whs affiliation.

I think the goal is too get as many “products/brands” as possible, rather than focusing on other retailers.

For instance there is no reason for them to have to have Harvey Norman, JB Hifi, Smiths City, Briscoes etc on the platform to be successful, rather all they need is to have all the same products that those retailers sell on the platform. All those other retailers are merely aggregators of other brands, so themarket is in direct competition. (Just like Amazon doesn’t have Walmart etc).

The retailers themarket.com really wants are those selling goods that The warehouse group doesn’t stock, either because they are an exclusive to that retailer, or that retailer operates in a different market segment or niche that the warehouse group doesn’t serve (like the Sabin luxury handbag store I mentioned - there is no way you would ever see that in the red sheds).

To be clear: I hold no WHS anymore, for multiple reasons as previously mentioned. I think K-mart is absolutely fantastic at present and slowly gobbling market share from the red sheds, and the red shed product needs a giant shakeup to compete.

WHS is doing very well with the inventory management and implementing new systems etc, and also was a genius move to co-locate Warehouse stationary into Red sheds (which has simultaneously dramatically lowered operating costs, and also significantly lifted sales per sqm for red sheds as its floor space has shrunk by a sizable amount), but the red sheds themselves need a big facelift away from the aisle based layouts, and they need to expand/rethink their home brand product range to be more comparable with the Kmart Anko product range.

[winner69]

Kmart in Australia have a TheMarket.com equivalent -- Catch.com

And in NZ catch.co.nz

Seems to be doing OK