Page 50 - HW AUGUST 2019

then as now
Then as now
– July & August 2009
BAD TIMES ALWAYS offer better stuff to write about than good times. Indeed, this time of the year a decade ago we were talking about “economic turbulence” and how 2009 thus
far had been “recession-racked”.
With the value of non-residential consents overtaking residential for the first time in a decade, 2009 and 2010 would be low points for sales in the hardware channel and consents would also yoyo until as recently as 2013.
Mid-2009, we also noted a more than doubling of the number of business debts on Dun & Bradstreet’s books, and that some 44,000 Kiwi businesses were “likely to pay their trade accounts in a delinquent manner”.
Great phrase, “in a delinquent manner” – it creates a mental picture of companies behaving delinquently, like Monty Python’s piratical Crimson Permanent Assurance in The Meaning of Life.
Sad however to note that, in our industry, the concept of corporate delinquency resonates to this day.
Still, there was some light at the end of the tunnel by 2009 and we were pleased to report that the “deepest of the economic fog which has shrouded NZ over the past months appears to be lifting with economists and forecasters alike making cautious noises about economic recovery”.
Craig Wilson was heading up Mitre 10 at the time. At the cooperative’s 35th birthday event he said that although the GFC was certainly challenging it had also strengthened the cooperative.
What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, as they say.
Last but not least, some things never change. Take shrinkage. A decade ago, KPMG’s 2009 Global Retail Loss Prevention
Survey estimated retail losses due to theft by customers and staff, damage and the retailer’s own errors as the equivalent of 3% of sales.
Theft by people outside the retailer’s business was put at just over a third of all shrinkage in the APAC region 10 years ago, the rest being put down to internal theft, inter-company fraud and process failures.
To bring shrinkage up to date, a report just issued in July this year says that shrinkage cost Australasian retailers $3.52 billion in the 2018 financial year and that more than half was from shoplifting.
Then, as now....
Among mid-2009’s “Hardware Heroes” were two people with significant skin in the game –
Paul Curran (far left, above) of Hillside Building Supplies in Glenfield (now Hillside ITM) and Norman Hayes (above right) of E Hayes in Invercargill.
48 NZHJ | AUGUST 2019 MORE AT www.hardwarejournal.co.nz
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