Shoppers looking for a great deal three weeks out from Christmas at Dick Smith are leaving disappointed as the really deep discounting is mostly happening on in-house brands originally ticketed at entry level prices.
Although Dick Smith kicked off its clearance sale on Friday with store only offers, today its ’48 hour Sellathon’ launched online. However, within one of the most desirable categories, tablets, the highest discount is $60 on the Samsung TAB A 9.7 S-PN LTE 16G bringing it down to $539.
Last week, Gerry Harvey described the stock as “crook’’ and in a radio interview on Friday with finance journalist Ross Greenwood, JB HiFi CEO, Richard Murray observed that, “if you have really good stock, you will always be able to sell it.”
“Australian shoppers don’t want to give their family something [for Christmas] that’s been sitting in a warehouse for 12 months,” he added.
Last week Dick Smith said it would take a $A60 million ($65m) non-cash impairment, before tax, on inventory across Australia and New Zealand as part of an ongoing review. The retailer brought in external consultants after disappointing trading in October and November, and is investing “significant marketing activity” to stimulate sales ahead of Christmas. Managing director Nick Abboud said Dick Smith would maintain “flexibility on gross margin to reduce inventory and improve our debt position,” a signal that more discounting is likely.
After speculation that former Big W executive Argy Pereira was being parachuted into the company to replace Abboud, Dick Smith chairman Rob Murray dismissed those reports, coming out in support of Abboud. He said that Dick Smith was focused on Christmas trading and the strategic review under way.
Meanwhile analysts are now saying that the impact of the Dick Smith discounting will be more muted as they now believe a large proportion of discounted and impaired stock is lower quality and unique private label product.
This story first appeared in Appliance Retailer.