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then as now
Then as now – October 2011
THIS ISSUE WE’RE looking back at what we found in October 2011 and you may be thinking “10 years ago – what can have changed in that time?”
Well, the answer is plenty, and although building consents mid-2011 were yo-yoing, spending on home improvement was quite positive with August’s Paymark spending figures for Retail Home Decorating & Hardware
retailing faring better than the market overall.
Indeed, several large retailers were looking optimistically at
the medium term, although with the benefit of hindsight it’s clear that some got their forecasts wildly wrong...
Did the failed Masters project simply aim too high or too wide?
JACK OF ALL TRADES,
MASTER OF NONE?
Announced in 2009 with the first store opening two years later, Masters, the disastrous Woolworths-Lowe’s home improvement venture, would last just five years, until the end of 2016, and cost both Woolworths and Lowe’s money and kudos.
But, back in October 2011, we were reporting on the initial fruits of this joint venture, with the first store opening its doors in Braybrook, 10km from Melbourne, on 1 September 2011.
The highly anticipated first site boasted an impressive 13,500m2 footprint and one retail commentator in Australia went so far as to state: “Masters is a masterstroke. [It] is the most significant and game changing new retail concept to open in Australia in more than a decade,”
Braybrook was the first of 150 planned stores and expectations were bullish to say the least.
By January 2016 however, with 63 stores on the books and Woolworths admitting it was losing AU$200 million a year, we
find partner Lowe’s stating publicly that the introduction of Masters, was simply “too aggressive” and that too many stores had been rolled out before a successful format had been found.
Indeed, such was the disconnect between the two players that Lowe’s told Woolworths it was pulling out of Masters later that same month.
Having already lost some AU$600 million on Masters in four years, and admitting that it simply couldn’t make Masters work, Woolworths then announced it was exiting home improvement entirely and would also sell or even close its other hardware banner, Home Timber & Hardware, with its 275+ stores.
Woolworths said in a statement: “Our recent review of our operating performance indicates it will take many years for Masters to become profitable. We have determined we cannot continue to sustain ongoing losses from this business.”
Sunday 11 December 2016 marked the closure of the last Masters stores.
Home Timber & Hardware is now of course a key part of
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OCTOBER 2021 | NZHJ 47