16 March 2012

DFO goes to the wall

| johnboy
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dfo

The ABC reports that McGrath Nicol is overseeing Fyshwicks DFO:

Partner Shane O’Keeffe says it may take up to six months to find a buyer for the centre.

“We’ll run a very orderly campaign, it’s not a quick fire sale of the premises. We’ll seek a buyer over the next three to six months,” he said.

“There are buyers interested in these assets and there’s a good market for that at the moment. So we’ll shortly go out for expressions of interests and we’ll appoint an agent to assist us with the running of that sale.”

For not it’s business as usual.

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Thoroughly Smashed said :

Funny that, after Nikon’s recent threatening statements regarding firmware support for parallel imports, something which can only end badly for them.

Indeed. It seems to have taken them an inordinate amount of time to realise that their days of tight control over the local market are well and truly over. Judging by the above link, they also don’t seem to hold the intelligence of their customers in particularly high regard.

Thoroughly Smashed9:58 am 19 Mar 12

Erg0 said :

Interestingly, Nikon Australia have dropped their prices significantly in the last couple of weeks, in part because JB Hi Fi made a fairly strong statement by selling parallel imported SLRs on their website. Hopefully a sign that the manufacturers are starting to realise the futility of fighting the future.

Funny that, after Nikon’s recent threatening statements regarding firmware support for parallel imports, something which can only end badly for them.

Interestingly, Nikon Australia have dropped their prices significantly in the last couple of weeks, in part because JB Hi Fi made a fairly strong statement by selling parallel imported SLRs on their website. Hopefully a sign that the manufacturers are starting to realise the futility of fighting the future.

Clown Killer10:13 pm 18 Mar 12

My understanding is that for warranty, the applicable law is that where the transaction occurred – in the case of online purchases that’s where the supplier is based (despit the fact you provided credit card details etc. in your own home). General rule should be, if you can’t afford to blow off a grand here or there on something like camera gear then online may not really be the cheapest option.

I agree with JB though on retailers strategies. As a rule I couldn’t be arsed purchasing anything at ‘sales’ as its simply far more convenient to pay full price and get the undivided attention of a sales person eager to make a sale. Calling ahead and making an appointment to have a specific sales person attend to your needs at an appointed time is the best way … sure many businesses don’t offer this service, but that’s probably why I don’t bother spending money with them either.

Thoroughly Smashed4:47 pm 18 Mar 12

“Grey imports” is also the wrong term. They’re parallel imports.

The big reason to buy from a store rather than online is going to be expert advice.

Retaillers are going to have to think very, very hard about that!

Opening a shop in a big mall and staffing it with bored teenagers is going to be deader than disco.

a 50% price increase for a 1 year warranty? No thanks i’ll self-insure. Grey imports ftw

melon1234 said :

c_c said :

Pandy said :

Cheap SLR ameras on-line? They mostly are grey imports with no Aussie warranty. Thats why the brick and mortar stores are important.

Get real.

They all come out of the same factory in Japan or Taiwan.

Warranty is between the consumer and the manufacturer, the retailers plays no part.

Except of course for the most part, when you ring up the manufacturer to claim warranty, they don’t recognise the warranty because it never came through their distribution channels. Sure, you can return it back to the country it originated from, but it’s more hassle than it’s worth. If you don’t care too much about warranty (and I’ve been one of those people), then it’s not an issue.

There’s no repair agents for Canon or Nikon in Canberra, warranty repairs have to be sent via registered freight to Sydney anyway.

Even when Canon did offer a drop-off point at their Canberra office, it was only so their staff could package it up for the trip to Sydney, a service which despite the premium Canon Australia charges, they decided to discontinue.

A warranty only lasts 12 months, after then you’ll be paying for the repairs anyway regardless of where the camera was purchased.

c_c said :

Pandy said :

Cheap SLR ameras on-line? They mostly are grey imports with no Aussie warranty. Thats why the brick and mortar stores are important.

Get real.

They all come out of the same factory in Japan or Taiwan.

Warranty is between the consumer and the manufacturer, the retailers plays no part.

Except of course for the most part, when you ring up the manufacturer to claim warranty, they don’t recognise the warranty because it never came through their distribution channels. Sure, you can return it back to the country it originated from, but it’s more hassle than it’s worth. If you don’t care too much about warranty (and I’ve been one of those people), then it’s not an issue.

I do agree that it doesn’t mean ‘bricks and mortar’ stores are the be all and end all. There’s plenty of online stores these days that DO have legitimate distribution rights and provide above board manufacturer warranty. Again usually more expensive than overseas grey imports, but still cheaper than a ‘bricks and mortar’ store.

End of the day, the person serious about buying and saving money uses both. Checks the product they want in person, and finds the best price online. That’s why it’s been important for ‘bricks and mortar’ stores to be smart about price matching if they want to continue trading.

Pandy said :

Cheap SLR ameras on-line? They mostly are grey imports with no Aussie warranty. Thats why the brick and mortar stores are important.

Get real.

GardeningGirl said :

Oh yes! Uninspiring is about as good as it gets. Some malls haven’t designed any views or natural daylight but some have even got rid of what they had, like the big windows in the bank and the former Myer in the Hyperdome, what a waste. Cluttering the corridors with the little mobile phone, etc, kiosks which impedes pedestrian flow is silly and even more so when stores nearby are vacant. Good cheerful not too loud background music can add positively to a nice atmosphere but I’ve walked out of places as soon as I’ve done what I absolutely needed to get done because of the noise including the blaring music. “Like living inside a bellowing TV ad” haha, well said.

Too bad it’s all part of the design philosophy. The ol’ “provide no natural light or indications of time to prevent you from realising how many weeks you’ve just spent shopping”. Personally I don’t think it’s relevant these days, but doesn’t seem to stop it happening.

GardeningGirl11:08 pm 17 Mar 12

madamcholet said :

Most online clothing retailers have size guides which are pretty good – you will have to have an idea of your measurements obviously and then convert the size to whatever country you are buying from. If you buy from clothing retailers who only operate online then mostly it is cheaper – I have purchased from Next UK who used to price in US $, but wised up and started pricing in AUS S – still cheaper tho.

Put that together with the fact that you don’t have to leave the house and interact with assistants who aren’t really interested and the odd mistake is not going to cause any problems really. They do also have returns policies if you really do want to exchange something.

Knowledgeable staff with a helpful attitude and pleasant manner should be one of the big advantages of shopping in person, but too often they aren’t.

Not that I shop for clothes at DFO. Like Primal I sometimes go to the Homemaker Hub (always hoping a few more stores might be occupied) but I haven’t walked around the rest of it lately.

Most online clothing retailers have size guides which are pretty good – you will have to have an idea of your measurements obviously and then convert the size to whatever country you are buying from. If you buy from clothing retailers who only operate online then mostly it is cheaper – I have purchased from Next UK who used to price in US $, but wised up and started pricing in AUS S – still cheaper tho.

Put that together with the fact that you don’t have to leave the house and interact with assistants who aren’t really interested and the odd mistake is not going to cause any problems really. They do also have returns policies if you really do want to exchange something.

GardeningGirl2:54 pm 17 Mar 12

AsparagusSyndrome said :

madamcholet said :

Not surprising as it is totally crap. I just don’t believe Canberrans need or want that style of shopping. It’s so depressing to walk around these areas. When I lived on the Northern Beaches in Sydney, I used to frequent Waringah Mall, which whilst packed most of the time had a really good mix of open air and undercover shopping.

With online shopping booming, who goes to shopping centres unless they have to?

I fully agree – the design of shopping centres in Canberra ranges from ‘uninspiring’ to ‘antisocial’ to ‘urban disaster’.

Warringah (while not perfect itself) provides some useful ideas of how some things can be done better in regard to sunlight and natural daylight vs artificial light, fresh air vs recycled air, plants and trees vs neon signs and mobile phone stands, crowd flow vs choke points, integrating with the neighborhood instead of dominating and shutting it out, etc.

And it’s not only the layout. Just to walk through DFO gives me a headache from the noise – the constant high pitch squeal from god-knows-what, the uber-treble over-pumped saturated music crap, endless bellowing announcements from the spruiker buffoons some shops that must drive their neighbours batty, and the undamped concrete/glass/steel construction that makes for endless echo and reverb. It’s like living inside a bellowing TV ad. Simply awful. Nobody needs to shop that badly.

Oh yes! Uninspiring is about as good as it gets. Some malls haven’t designed any views or natural daylight but some have even got rid of what they had, like the big windows in the bank and the former Myer in the Hyperdome, what a waste. Cluttering the corridors with the little mobile phone, etc, kiosks which impedes pedestrian flow is silly and even more so when stores nearby are vacant. Good cheerful not too loud background music can add positively to a nice atmosphere but I’ve walked out of places as soon as I’ve done what I absolutely needed to get done because of the noise including the blaring music. “Like living inside a bellowing TV ad” haha, well said.

GardeningGirl2:39 pm 17 Mar 12

devils_advocate said :

Felix the Cat said :

madamcholet said :

With online shopping booming, who goes to shopping centres unless they have to?

This

Yeah but there’s still plenty of things you have to go to shops for. I mean I realise DFO don’t sell suits (or none that anyone would wear) but trying to order a suit online would be an exercise in futility. Probably this extends to clothes in general.

I haven’t yet tried it myself because I too wonder how you successfully buy clothes and shoes online. Between oddities in labelling and variations in brands and differences among different sewers even for supposedly the same item in the same size I have had enough problems with sizes even going into a store. But I’ve talked to an increasing number of people who are doing it not just for price but for quality and choice and they think it’s well worth the risk of sometimes getting something not quite right which can then be given to a friend or sold on Ebay. I know someone whose favourite pair of comfortable shoes was bought online, surprisingly. Sometimes ordering something online is out of sheer frustration because you can’t find it in the stores. I wonder how many salespeople actually pass on to management the customer comments about “do you have this” or “why don’t you stock that”?

I haven’t been to DFO in a while but to me it’s just another mall, the corridors aren’t as fancy as the Canberra Centre but the toilets are better.

AsparagusSyndrome1:34 pm 17 Mar 12

madamcholet said :

Not surprising as it is totally crap. I just don’t believe Canberrans need or want that style of shopping. It’s so depressing to walk around these areas. When I lived on the Northern Beaches in Sydney, I used to frequent Waringah Mall, which whilst packed most of the time had a really good mix of open air and undercover shopping.

With online shopping booming, who goes to shopping centres unless they have to?

I fully agree – the design of shopping centres in Canberra ranges from ‘uninspiring’ to ‘antisocial’ to ‘urban disaster’. Warringah (while not perfect itself) provides some useful ideas of how some things can be done better in regard to sunlight and natural daylight vs artificial light, fresh air vs recycled air, plants and trees vs neon signs and mobile phone stands, crowd flow vs choke points, integrating with the neighborhood instead of dominating and shutting it out, etc.

And it’s not only the layout. Just to walk through DFO gives me a headache from the noise – the constant high pitch squeal from god-knows-what, the uber-treble over-pumped saturated music crap, endless bellowing announcements from the spruiker buffoons some shops that must drive their neighbours batty, and the undamped concrete/glass/steel construction that makes for endless echo and reverb. It’s like living inside a bellowing TV ad. Simply awful. Nobody needs to shop that badly.

Pandy said :

Cheap SLR ameras on-line? They mostly are grey imports with no Aussie warranty. Thats why the brick and mortar stores are important.

Get real.

They all come out of the same factory in Japan or Taiwan.

Warranty is between the consumer and the manufacturer, the retailers plays no part.

When you buy a Canon, a Nikon or a Panasonic dSLR which costs say $400-800 above what the US price is, what you’re really doing is prepaying for a few hundred dollars in repairs if you ever claim the warranty.

Retailers are struggling to make anything off camera anymore, or many electronics for that matter. They have only themselves to blame for clinging on to old business models and driving each other’s prices to the bone.

Cheap SLR ameras on-line? They mostly are grey imports with no Aussie warranty. Thats why the brick and mortar stores are important.

devils_advocate5:11 pm 16 Mar 12

Felix the Cat said :

madamcholet said :

With online shopping booming, who goes to shopping centres unless they have to?

This

Yeah but there’s still plenty of things you have to go to shops for. I mean I realise DFO don’t sell suits (or none that anyone would wear) but trying to order a suit online would be an exercise in futility. Probably this extends to clothes in general. Ditto things like cookwear, or knives, you can really only tell how useful they’ll be when they’re in your hands. Also fresh food, I wouldn’t trust some store packer to choose my avocados or salmon fillets. Also hardware is probably like this, and anythign where you might actually need sensible advice on comparing two products against your own needs (although this is getting rarer and rarer).

Really the big areas of usefulness for online shopping are commodities that have very little product differentiation or experiential component. Things like consumer electronics (maybe not hi-fi gear); books; and this is reflected in the successful online stores. Alternatively I guess it works as a peer-to-peer arrangement like ebay where the online stores are secondary.

In short, I still have a significant use for bricks and mortar stores.

Felix the Cat4:55 pm 16 Mar 12

madamcholet said :

With online shopping booming, who goes to shopping centres unless they have to?

This

EvanJames said :

You’ve got to be pretty motivated (or bored) to keep trooping right around.

i agree, i understand why they did it, but imo it makes the place less attractive for shoppers.

Primal said :

These days, I find myself going to DFO for the Homemaker area more than the outlet stores.

Yeah, me too. And I’d much rather go to those shops when they had Fyshwick frontages, you could park right out front and put your new furniture and stuff into your car. I miss the Freedom Furniture shop, really enjoyed stooging around in there.

I rarely go right around the back part of the clothes bit. I park under the home area (dpeneding on which shop i’m going to) and the other shops I like are quite close to where it crosses over. (the cotton sheets shop, and Rivers cheap T shirts shop).

You’ve got to be pretty motivated (or bored) to keep trooping right around.

These days, I find myself going to DFO for the Homemaker area more than the outlet stores.

Not surprising as it is totally crap. I just don’t believe Canberrans need or want that style of shopping. It’s so depressing to walk around these areas. When I lived on the Northern Beaches in Sydney, I used to frequent Waringah Mall, which whilst packed most of the time had a really good mix of open air and undercover shopping.

With online shopping booming, who goes to shopping centres unless they have to?

shirty_bear said :

Touch of irony … CostCo has (re)vitalised the Brand Depot area, which looks like being the ultimate winner. The former occupants out there must be unimpressed.

Unless CostCo was somehow responsible for the failure of DFO I can’t see the irony. The way I see it Brand Depot and DFO failed because their core premise was ‘factory direct prices’ but the reality was ‘mostly retail prices’ – the result was a foregone conclusion.

Also the redevelopment of Majura Park isn’t based on the previous ‘factory outlet’ model, so the former tennants aren’t being slighted. However they can take solice in the knowledge that the latest reincarnation may not be any more successful than Brand Depot. The Majura Parkway plans shows that the whole precinct will be bypassed by quite a distance, with no direct on/off ramps. Unless that plan changes I predict that the area will become a retail wasteland. Ahh the circle of retail life.

From the article, I get the impression that the problem has less to do with the centre’s patronage and more to do with the owners’ leveraging.

Yeah, the signage is almost finished… Big signs with Woolworths, Big W and Dick Smith on the front. They were advertising tenancies for small retailers also, and now the banner says only a few left. The chemist outlet next to Trade Secret is moving into the brand depot complex at Easter, too.

I go to DFO specifically to visit particular shops, and strategically park so I don’t have to walk half way around the place to get to them. Still seems to be a good number of people shopping there, but it’s not chockers like the one in Sydney near Homebush.

Touch of irony … CostCo has (re)vitalised the Brand Depot area, which looks like being the ultimate winner. The former occupants out there must be unimpressed.

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