By James Wells
BRISBANE: Now Betta Stores Limited (BSL) has announced the sale of its Chandlers-branded store at Kippa-ring, there are only five company owned stores from the Buy-Rite business to be sold.
The Kippa-ring store, located at the Peninsula Fair Shopping Centre has been sold to a manager of a former corporate-owned store as part of BSL’s strategy of divesting its company-owned stores to focus on its core franchising
services.
BSL chief executive officer, Guy Houghton, said the sale of the store represented the sixth sale of company-owned stores during the past month.
These sales included stores at Morayfield and Aspley, as well as three Melbourne stores to Narta member, Clive Peeters.
“The Kippa-ring store has been sold to one of our existing store managers, who is looking forward to being an owner-operator,” Houghton said.
“The funds generated from the sales will be re-invested back into the BSL Group as part of our refocus on our core business of franchising. We are a franchisor and these sales highlight our commitment to focusing on our franchise services and our franchisees.”
A contract for the sale has now been executed with the transaction expected to complete on 1 August, 2006.
BSL chairman, Patrick Tynan, told Current.com.au that there are five remaining stores to be sold in the Buy-Rite Southern and Buy-Rite Northern businesses.
The largest retail shop to be sold is the Carnegie store in Melbourne which is over 3,000 square metres in size, and was the group’s pilot store for the furniture and electrical superstore concept.
Other stores within the Buy-Rite Southern group include the former Buy Rite store at Graythorne in Melbourne and the Chandlers store at Berrima in Darwin.
Following the sale of the Kippa-ring store, BSL only has one store left in its Buy Rite Northern Group – the Rothwell Superstore located in Brisbane.
“We have interested buyers in at least two of the stores and intial interest in two of the other stores,” said Tynan.