As seen here: https://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/95034360/the-war…
Any thoughts on what this will mean for Warehouse Money? I'm betting no more 20%-off-everything days.
The Warehouse are offloading their financial services division
Ljoshtnz on 24/07/2017 - 16:01
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That's all very normal, the warehouse will continue to offer the warehouse finical products under license and partnership with SBS bank. The warehouse itself just doesn't handle the actual background work anymore.
Cynical me sees the 20% off days and $50 sign ups as meant to boost customer numbers. A pump and dump. I can't see how an outside company could offer decent discounts at the Warehouse. But have no actual idea.
I got my card in Dec 2015. My customer number is 1000014xx.
My parents just got a card. Their CN is 100167xxx.
If they issue cards sequentially, that means they've created over 165,000 customer numbers in less than 2 years.
I hope the warehouse has got a plan for its future as media mentioned Amazon might expand to NZ after Australia.
I think NZ will be much tougher for them to crack than Aus. Small, distant, market. They'd be better off offering a 3 day Prime service from their Aus warehouse. It'll probably end up like IKEA or Aldi, where everyone is hopeful they will show up, but they probably never will.
I'm thinking The Warehouse is going for an EDLP strategy and doing away with weekly specials. This week's usual catalogue is missing and the specials section has very few products that are actually on discount.
They tried the EDLP strategy a few years back but reverted back to the sale model.
Kiwis want a big discount - end of story. Blame Briscoes and Kathmandu for that.
Having said that, K-Mart seem to be breaking the mould with their EDLP pricing - don't see specials with them much at all.
@n908671: Apparently The Warehouse thinks that big discount strategies will play badly against the likes of Amazon. That's why I think they're going EDLP, starting with the dollar deals.
Talking about Kmart, I just came back from Kmart St Lukes and the checkout line stretch across half the store. So they must be doing something right.
More here:
http://theregister.co.nz/news/2017/03/warehouse-group-gears-…Another week, another ELDP mailer.
Amazon or any e retail company simply can't function in New Zealand because of insane pricing of postage / logistic. If Amazon comes then they have to start thier logistic company first which they won't do for just 4 million people.
It's shame that 40cents of stuff can be delivered from China to my house for free ( through NZ post) but to post local it's $5 to $28 dollars. Not sure who plan these things.
We have to stop making postmen/ladies millionaires then only there will be Amazon in this country.
You word it as if NZ Post is lining it's pockets with it's pricing, iirc if they didn't own Kiwibank they wouldn't have made a profit the past 2 years..
Amazon already sells to Kiwis, and shipping is somewhat affordable because they have a deep volume discount deal with USPS - The same deal that makes Amazon Prime possible. In fact the deal was so good that Amazon can afford to offer Prime to residents in Hawaii, Alaska and Puerto Rico, all of them just as far away compared to Aussie & NZ.
The Chinese sellers get a better deal because they're being charged by weight & volume, not per parcel. This makes shipping very small, very light items very affordable. NZ Post takes a hit here however, especially with the cost of rural delivery per parcel.
IMO the thing to watch for in Amazon's Aussie expansion plans is whether or not they could cut a good enough deal with AusPost to offer Prime shipping for Tasmania. If they do then expect them to compete heavily in NZ. IMO their biggest problem will not be the cost of shipping, but the long delivery lead times.
@Avantime: True, I ordered first time through Amazon and they shipped using iparcel. It took 1 month and 5 days to get item delivered. On positive point they refunded my shipping cost. Its a mess at this stage. When big retailers like flipkart,snapdeal and Amazon started in India they were not happy with unreliability of local post therefore they started their own logistic solutions and its one of the best services I have ever seen.
1 month and 5 days?! Wow, that's certainly an exception. I usually get them within 2 weeks, even with iParcel. Have never had an Amazon parcel take over a month. That goes for DHL too, they are usually really good (CourierPost/NZ Post) and deliver the day after a parcel arrives in the country and is cleared by customs.
Just incase you don't know this already, many NZ branches of multinational companies have their warehouses in Sydney and the NZ branch gets overnight stock transfer by logistics companies such as DHL in pallets, once here they are then delivered individually by Courierpost etc. So shipping/logistic isn't a problem as long as Amazon setup a warehouse in Sydney. Next business day delivery for the main centers is good enough.
Iparcel is UPS the worst part is they contracted the NZ leg of the delivery to Fastway courier, which is THE WORST courier company in this country.
Interesting. "Grayson said The Warehouse would continue to sell the services it currently provided under the Warehouse Money brand and he was not aware of any planned changes at this point. " suggests it will probably continue as normal, with the promotions, etc. But never know.