How can jb and wows sites suck so much? Is there a decent shop with a decent site in bris?

Im after some good cube speakers like some bose ones, a sub or 2 and possible a good reciever.

a local site like this would be good...http://www.richersounds.com/splashpage.php

It is truly amazing how neglectful wow and jb are of business coming from the web. That's why umart always wins if they have a similar product - at least I can find out it's price and availability online. Umart don't really specialise in home theatre though.

I remember reading a press release from a large department store in the UK not long ago. They were giving up on their e-commerce and online presence as it wasn't cost effective or profitable. They termed it 'Leaving the future behind'.

target/kmart/myer did a similar thing a few years ago, they used to have quite a useful online shop for buying online, however they simply didn't get the quantity of sales to pay for the infrastructure required ( not just IT, but warehousing etc as well ), so they moved away from it, and their websites are basically just scans of catalogues dumped online.

There's a fine balance to developing an online presense to suit a business and it's needs. Many businesses don't do enough, Many do too much, very few get it just right.

While the more tech-savvy among us may require websites with pricing and preferably a shopping cart so that we can price-check and even buy stuff directly online, we're probably a small portion of the population and simply not enough to make it profitable.

I don't think the world is going to have less and less of 'us'. And companies that think simply dumping a PDF advertisement onto a website constitutes 'ecommerce' deserve to get left behind.

such a shame... you would think that these stores have a db of inventory etc? put a website front end on then your away?

and their websites are basically just scans of catalogues dumped online.

I really hate when companies do that, how can it be non profitable?
they've never given it a chance

even if k-mart/big-w etc just gave one person the sole responsibility of sitting there and putting the prics/etc into a DB
it's a data entry position, could be done by monkies

they dont even have to have a store/warehouse to do the shipping
just put the fking prices on the site!@

I think Stinky pretty well nailed it.

The cost of maintaining a web-site for thise sort of retailers would be huge. Turn-over of stock (1,000's of different lines), price changes etc..... They would need to integrate their own stock control database (like what the registers use) to the website for customer access.

U-Mart and CA get around this by having their web-site as their stock control database. It would have been specifically built this way from the ground up. Anytime I've been to CA and ask a question, they go straight to the computer and use their web-site.

In answering Mooby's question try http://www.stereosupplies.com.au/stereosupplies/default.asp. They are on the Gold Coast now (used to be in Brisbane) and stock some pretty good brands like Rotel, Polk Audio and Bose.



last edited by mission at 13:29:09 30/Jan/09

ta. its just handy to know what stores hold what, instead of driving around all day trying to find good stores with brand you want :S

great, 404 on their pdf!

last edited by mooby at 13:29:19 30/Jan/09

The cost of maintaining a web-site for thise sort of retailers would be huge.

I could write an API that would pull the inventory/stock levels/price changes from their existing register DB (ie, when they scan a barcode and it checks that DB..)


$1 billion dollars

They would need to integrate their own stock control database (like what the registers use) to the website for customer access.

Sorry epic post ahead - this subject neatly bridges my two careers so I have a bit to say!

I used to manage BigW and Target Stores before I realised it was a stupid dead-end career and went back to Uni.

You wouldn't believe how s*** their back end stuff is, or what a massive failboat the average store's inventory control is. I was last involved with the industry in about 2002 and their inventory computers were some sort of aged and slow, green-screen mainframe client (no s***!).

They have some groovy equipment where you can place orders based on the computer's SOH (stock on hand) figure, and even do a recurring order. But its all useless because 3 weeks after stocktake (sometimes even immediately after stocktake) the SOH figures are completely borked. The holes you see on shelves fo rproduct are 90% of the time caused by bad SOH.

Individual stores simply wouldn't cope with being part of a national web database and ordering system and it would be an epic fail if they tried without rebuilding their systems from the ground up and fixing the endemic process problems at store level with maintenance of SOH.

Which leaves online ordering from a centralised regional distribution centre. Unfortunately while the warehousing is more professional at the distros, there are the same technology issues. At this stage just not enough ROI yet for them to pursue wide-reaching changes at warehousing level to do this.

They've done feasibility projects into it and its too big a job to do well for the big boys yet.

It will be the success of small players like UMart and play-asia, indexed by services like shopbot, built from the ground up around e-distribution that will eventually effect the sort of changes we want. Eventually one of them will grow up to compete with the Hardley Normals and the like and this challenge to market share will signal significant ROI for the infrastructure and process changes involved.

last edited by Hogfather at 13:40:50 30/Jan/09

dick smith does it
jaycar does it
umart does it


all retailers with multiple points of presence (DSE more so but still)
its funny how tech oriented companies can do it and see a future in it, but the bigger retail outlets can't

I guess a lot of that is due to the fact that mostly women shop at those stores (target/bigw etc), not being sexist here but i mean come on - how many girls do you know that will jump online and check the website before just heading down to the local westfield?

I guess a lot of that is due to the fact that mostly women shop at those stores (target/bigw etc), not being sexist here but i mean come on - how many girls do you know that will jump online and check the website before just heading down to the local westfield?

There is also the tactile problem. A lot of the stock carried by traditional retailers doesn't sell well online. I know I like to try on clothes for cut and fit before buyng, for instance. My wife likes to feel the quality of sheets and towels and stuff before buying them.

But if I'm buying a Nintendo, I just want to know that I can send it back if it is f***ed, what the price is, and how long it will take to get to me. The shops you listed don't really sell tactile goods that need to be inspected before the consumer will part with dorras.

They're also a lot smaller than BigW. DS is pretty big, but they would have a bit of a company mission / theme to lead the way with this stuff compared to a BigW or Target.

last edited by Hogfather at 13:46:54 30/Jan/09

thats true, i probably wouldn't buy tactile stuff online - except for funny t-shirts, and only because I just buy the biggest size they offer

hmm.. intresting points hogfather, but i cant help but think this: why can most uk stores do it? ffs, ive worked with those n00bs for 6years.

comet.co.uk, ebuyer.co.uk, pcworld.co.uk, argos.co.uk, dixons.co.uk, maitland.co.uk, empiredirect.co.uk, richersounds.co.uk to name a few. arent we the clever country?

I thought we were the laid back/lazy country?

Also consider that up to 80% of purchases at a large retail store are impulse buys and not what the consumer originally went in to buy. With online stores, you buy what you want then check out. Being in there also makes it hard to price check so people usually take a punt on it being decent value.

The big retailers want people in the shops impulse spending not online clinically price checking across other competitors. So online is often neglected on purpose to make people go to the stores.

^ makes a good point

but this;

so people usually take a punt on it being decent value.

is becoming a thing of the past, i regularly whip out the iphone and hitup google for a price check before i buy anything over a few hundred dollars

Also realise the companies with a big retail presence often have internal politics that are very much against an internet presence which might been seen as taking business away from the retail space.

mooby:

http://www.digitalhome.com.au/

That's JB online site, got most of their stocks online

https://shop.1wow.com.au/productcart/pc/home.asp

Wow sights and sounds online stores, again has most of their stocks there.

What specific complains are you talking about? I normally find stuff I wanted on those sites just fine. In fact I used the price quoted on JB for Clive Peter to price match for my Samsung TV purchase recently.

Am I missing something?



last edited by Opec at 16:04:40 30/Jan/09

ah, ok. i did a google on jb, then followed the links and i got this page

http://www.jbhifi.com.au/jb-hi-fi-home-audio/speakers/

Yeah that's an old page probably. I agreed, it's f***ed how they don't make their ecom site more prominent, you'd have to click until you see the "buy online" overlay the product before you'll see their ecom site. Pretty convoluted I know but their ecom site is decent enough. These days I just go straight to their online ecom site. But yeah they really need to do something about that.

I guess we can hope in a few years most stores will be on-board. I much prefer looking s*** up online, then just going and picking it up... As opposed to shopping around looking out for whatever.

I agree with what tequila said, in that it is probably because of women / the non tech-savvy generation that a lot of retailers haven't got much of an ecommerce presence.

I guess we can hope in a few years most stores will be on-board.

i remember thinking that in the 90's

Catalogue coming soon