Customers are Masters, says hardware chief

May 24, 2012
The Age

MORE than half the people shopping for whitegoods at Masters hardware stores use smartphones to check competitors’ prices, group chief executive Don Stallings says.

He said to get those sales over the line in a traditional store, customer service and the personal touch had to be of the highest quality.

Speaking at the Bulky Goods Retailers Association conference in Sydney yesterday, Mr Stallings said Masters spent as much on training staff to deliver customer service as it did on the rest of the business.

Masters is the new hardware/home-improvement business of Woolworths, which has 12 stores across the country, with a further 19 under construction. It plans to have up to 150 open in the next five years.

But the Texas-born Mr Stallings said there were many challenges for the bulky goods sector, ranging from finding appropriate sites to differing state planning laws and consumer spending.

He told the conference that being a start-up/greenfields operation he had a clean slate but also intense competition, not just from Bunnings but from the internet.

”Low prices are the entrance tickets to the game, but not the game itself,” he said.

”We’ve all heard and said it, multi-channel retailing is here to stay and we can embrace it, jump on the bandwagon, or just ignore it.

”But ignoring it is not an option, given Australia is the fastest-growing country in the modernised world to adopt online shopping.

”But it’s not about bricks and mortar and the internet, it’s about how we bring it together for our customers.”

Mr Stallings said that aside from the internet and the weak residential market, which affected the hardware business, one of the main hurdles for expansion was finding sites.

When asked about planning laws, he said they differed among the states.

”State governments that are hungry for business are welcoming, whereas we have encountered others that are not interested and offer us sites where no one lives,” he said.

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