For those in the industry who may be reading this we hear this afternoon that the US retail chain Circuit City is to seek liquidation of 567 of its stores tommorrow after having become unable to reach arrangement with its creditors ... thats 34,000 people rendered unemployed at a stroke ...
Also this week we hear that NEC are joining the ranks of Fujitsu, Hitachi, and Philips and pulling the plug on their consumer electronics distribution in Australia. There are some insistent rumours of large Australian retail chains skirting close to the edge ...
The good news is that the Victorian specialist retail sector appears to be relatively healthy.
Unlike the Sydney scene where the specialists were decimated by the incursion of JB's and Harvey Normans into their hitherto cosseted suburbs, the Melbourne dealers have existed alongside those stores and maintained a degree of service standard and product differentiation that has served them well in these competitive and tough trading times. The actual business casualty here in Melbourne was a poorly focused group of stores called "HiFi Supermarket" that attempted to meet JB on it's home turf with predictable consequence ...