Coles lacks some bottle in Woolies war

Adele Ferguson July 26, 2012 The Age Supermarket giant Coles continued to close the gap in the battle with its bigger rival Woolworths – getting some help from the government’s $2.8 billion assistance package – but its liquor business once again was a drag on overall revenue. The booze division is an issue that hasn’t been lost on management, which confirmed that the unit – which includes Liquorland and Vintage Cellars – is slicing at least 0.9 per cent off the group’s food and liquor revenue. In sharp contrast, Woolworths is going from strength to strength in its equivalent business, which boasts the successful Dan Murphy’s discount outlets. The relative mismatch puts pressure on Coles to lift its game given Woolworths turned over more than $6.6 billion in revenue in the past year. Coles is estimated to have made less than half of that. A decade ago, Coles dominated the…

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AusPost, Apple battle on the cards

Asher Moses July 26, 2012 The Age Australia Post is modernising its business for the digital age. Australia Post is significantly undercutting Apple in both cost and delivery times for printed cards that users can create on their smartphones with custom photos and text. The Postcards app is part of a digital transformation at the government-owned organisation that has seen parcel volumes climb by 10 per cent in the past year. We may not be sending many letters in the post but the 10 million Australians who shop online every year have been a boon for Australia Post. More than two thirds of its parcels now originate from e-commerce transactions and last year’s Christmas season broke Australia Post records. The Australia Post cards cost $1.99 for domestic postage and $2.99 for international postage. Just how much online shopping we are doing depends on who you ask. According to Morgan Stanley…

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Ethics in retail: casualty or cornerstone?

Retail business ethics and corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been hot topics on the retail agenda in recent years. As retailers have extended their reach, leveraging production, manufacturing and supply chains resources from a growing list of developed and developing countries, there has been extensive recent media coverage of retail with an increasingly ethical and CSR focus, for example in relation to the detrimental environmental effects of palm oil production, concerns about live animal transportation, the use of illegally logged timbers in furniture production, depleted fishing stocks, overseas working conditions and domestic supplier / retailer relations. Download the full article here!

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Retailers’ Idea: Think Smaller in Urban Push

Daniel Borris for The New York Times By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD With little room to expand in the suburbs, retailers, including Office Depot, Wal-Mart and Target, are betting that opening small city stores will help their growth. It is a significant shift from their approach in the past, when they tried to cram their big-box formats into cities, often prompting big fights. This time, the retailers studied city dwellers with anthropological intensity and overhauled things as varied as store sizes (the city stores are a small fraction of the size of the suburban ones), packages (they must be compact enough for pedestrians) and signs (they are simple, so shoppers can get in and out within minutes). “The suburbs are basically saturated with retailers,” said Patrick L. Phillips, chief executive of the Urban Land Institute, an urban-planning research nonprofit, “but it’s easy to develop stores in the suburbs, and hard to develop…

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The all-consuming market for markets

Adele Ferguson July 28, 2012 The Age The Australian retail landscape is drowning under a Coles and Woolworths deluge, say industry observers. But can governments or regulators stem the flow? IN THE business world there is big, there is very big, and then there are Coles and Woolworths. Out of every $10 that Australians spend on groceries, up to $8 goes into the tills of the two chains, and the wallet widens when hardware, pokies, electronic goods, petrol, clothes and alcohol are thrown in. Indeed, the two behemoths have become so all-imposing in many towns and suburbs that local wags wonder whether their localities would more appropriately be called Colestown or Woolworthsville. In Toowoomba, Queensland, the territorial fight between the two so-called ugly sisters is at a flashpoint, with the independents – and local suppliers – caught in the crossfire. Debbie Smith, who runs a couple of independent Foodworks stores…

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Drinkers, smokers hit

July 28, 2012 The Age Drinkers and smokers face higher “sin taxes” from next week, as prices of alcohol and cigarettes continue to creep up faster than other goods. Taxes on spirits will rise the most, with the excise on a case of pre-mixed drinks rising by 21¢ when the changes take effect on Wednesday. This will mean $33.83 is tax on each case of pre-mixed drinks — which sell for between $60 and $90. A case of 24 cans of full-strength beer will rise by 8¢, taking the tax on a case to $14.97. Because the tax rates reflect alcohol content, the tax on a case of light beer will rise by just 3¢. The tax on a packet of 50 cigarettes will rise by 10¢, taking the government’s take from each packet to $17.44. The excise on a packet of 20 cigarettes will rise by 4¢. Read more:

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