Powering Into The Future
The Age
Tuesday April 20, 1999
Computers, CD-ROM drives, scanners, printers and all the other tools and toys of the information age are today as perishable as eggs and ripe peaches. Time, and the headlong rush of technological development, have made that a make-or-break fact for retailers.
A computer that was at the cutting edge in January is a rusty blade by June, and within 12 months is in the remainder bin. Such is the pace of electronic progress.
For Dick Smith Electronics, the company that, more than 20 years ago, sold the first primitive home computers in Australia, this has sparked a revolution in marketing methods.
The familiar, yellow-painted suburban shops are still there and more are being opened - eight this financial year - but they have been joined by Dick Smith's Powerhouses, electronics supermarts of the future; convergent technology aimed at the masses.
The company so far has four of these multi-million-dollar, purpose-built stores; three in the Sydney metropolitan area and one in Melbourne, on Dandenong Road in Carnegie. A second Melbourne store is being planned and the chain will be expanded progressively around the country.
Jeff Grover, the chief executive of Dick Smith Electronics, an autonomous division of Woolworths, says the Powerhouses are designed particularly to meet the convergence of technology.
Television, video, high-fidelity sound, DVD movies, computers and their peripherals will increasingly become part of a single technology stream.
Even the burglar alarms and communications systems for which the Dick Smith chain has long been famed are merging into computer systems that manage the entire home, office or factory.
Home-entertainment systems are becoming part of the increasingly dominant computer scene. That's fine for sales, but woe betide the store manager who gets stuck with yesterday's technology.
Mr Grover and his 122 stores around the country rely on sophisticated inventory control to avoid being stuck with non-sellers. This vital element of company management has made retailers more efficient and profitable, he says. ``You still have an enormous amount of money tied up, but it is working harder for you. You could not operate in our kind of retailing without it.
``It's a balancing act and, to make matters worse, in the food-chain of supply everyone is looking for the same thing but nobody wants to be left holding the parcel. It has to move rapidly down to the consumer.
``That urgency tends to make one more efficient and the pain you can get if you do not get it right makes you doubly energetic."
Though Dick Smith, aviator, innovator, philanthropist and all-round stormy petrel, no longer has an interest in the chain, his name and face are still in the logo and some of his dictums have survived for the managers, particularly: ``Do it Now!"
Mr Grover, a bulky, slightly craggy and amiable man, has been chief executive of Dick Smith Electronics since 1987. He joined the company from Downtown Duty Free, which he led from its inception in 1972 and built into the biggest chain of its kind in the country.
``This Powerhouse concept is a hybrid of the background of Dick Smith stores mixed with, we hope healthily, some of the most successful trends from overseas, particularly the US," he says.
``It was a matter of playing to the existing strengths of the business and pulling into that some of the things that were working elsewhere in the world.
``Our regular stores today have a very wide appeal."
© 1999 The Age
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