Industry News

Jane Harper Herald Sun June 05, 2012 WOOLWORTHS is likely to boost its strong profit margins thanks to a streamlined supply chain and its push into private label goods, analysts say. The supermarket giant, which has bigger margins than global counterparts including Tesco and Walmart, will continue to reap significant dividends from its efficient business model. In a note to investors, a Deutsche Bank analyst team led by Michael Simotas said the higher margins were not the result of unsustainable mark-ups. Instead, they were a product of Woolworths’ investment in programs to improve efficiency. “Woolworths enjoys high operating margins largely as a result of its low-cost of doing business,” the note says. “We believe this is an outcome resulting from considerable investment in its supply chain over the period of a decade which would be unlikely to be replicated by a competitor in the short-to-medium term.” The analyst team said…

Blair Speedy The Australian June 05, 2012 The Athlete’s Foot website makes recommendations, although it also urges shoppers to come into a store for a personalised fitting SHOE franchise The Athlete’s Foot is venturing into online retailing, the arena most responsible for poaching its sales. Ivan Hammerschlag, chairman of franchisor RCG Corporation, said the company had no choice but to try tackling its internet competitors head-on, despite a cost disadvantage that meant it would be unable to match them on price. “The world’s changed. Customers want to shop on the net and if you don’t let them do it they’ll buy from someone else,” he said. The company previously relied on high service levels to combat the threat of online sales. The TAF website makes shoe recommendations based on sex, weight, footprint and pattern of shoe wear, although it also urges shoppers to come into a store for a personalised…

The Daily Telegraph June 05, 2012 CALL it an appuccino. Sydney cafes are using smartphone technology so customers can order ahead. The iPhone and Android apps allow caffeine-addicts to collect orders within a 10-minute window. CitiCafe owner Stan Loupos, who launched his CitiCafe app, said: “People these days are always on the run and they just don’t have time to wait anymore. In the morning rush this is for the person that needs to be in the office, is running late and needs their morning fix.” The app cost more than $6000 to develop, and computers linking it cost a further $12,500. A survey by finance company UMI found 93 per cent of people did daily tasks such as booking appointments and paying bills online. The survey of more than 1000 Australians found women would stick it out with queues for 5-10 minutes while men only lasted 2-5 minutes. CitiCafe…

CSD Staff Jun 06, 2012 To help keep its stores stocked with fresh products, Wawa’s high-volume distribution center sports a high-bay chilled warehouse serviced by 16 fully-automated mini-load stacker cranes and a warehouse management system from Swisslog, allowing the dairy to move 42,000 crates of liquid products daily with an accuracy rate exceeding 99.9%. The name Wawa is well known throughout the mid-Atlantic states. Its dairy convenience stores are seemingly on every major thoroughfare, and with 400 million customers annually it presents a serious logistics challenge to keep the stores stocked. Nowhere is this challenge more critical than with the warehousing and distribution of its fresh liquid milk products. Few consumer food products require more demanding time and temperature controls from production through warehousing and distribution to their arrival on retailers’ shelves than dairy products. Fresh liquid milk must be distributed within days, and some of Wawa’s milk products are…

Eli Greenblat June 7, 2012 The Age Ross Brown believes retailers are threatening the wine industry. THE former boss of 120-year-old winery Brown Brothers, Ross Brown, has used an industry function to launch a spray against the nation’s leading retailers for flooding their stores with private-label wines that he said were hollow, copycats and masquerading as real brands. Speaking as chairman of Australia’s First Families of Wine, a grouping of 12 iconic family-owned wineries, Mr Brown said liquor outlets were crowding out quality Australian wines with private-label offerings. At the First Families event this week, Mr Brown was reported to have said the retailers – he is believed not to have named Woolworths and Coles – were buying up surplus wine and placing a label on it to suggest to shoppers a wine of higher value. Mr Brown told BusinessDay yesterday that some people thought wine labels invented overnight were…