By Chris Nicholls
MORNINGTON, VICTORIA: Betta Electrical’s Mornington store in southern Victoria has shut its doors, to be taken over and relocated by Betta Cranbourne.
The store ceased trading early last week, following a closing down sale with apparently 50 per cent off items in stock.
BSR Group managing director, Ian Brown, revealed the store could be a possible takeover target yesterday, but did not give further details. However, an investigation discovered Cranbourne Betta Superstore owner Chris Hocking (son of the BSR Group director of the same name) would take over the business.
When contacted by Current.com.au, Hocking said the new store would open in “six to seven weeks”, and would be “in the centre of Mornington”.
The current store is located on the outskirts of Mornington, in the Nepean Homemakers Centre on the Nepean Highway.
Hocking said the new store’s location had yet to be finalised, but said he had narrowed it down to three possible plots, with Betta Cranbourne to own the freehold on the final location.
In what could be seen as a competitive move against the local Clive Peeters store, which has a large cooking area, Hocking said the new Mornington Betta store would have “a cooking and whitegoods focus”.
Chris’s brother Dane will take over the Cranbourne store almost immediately, Hocking said, as he need to help establish the new Mornington outlet.
“I’ll take that [the Mornington store] on board, and hopefully we can do some pretty good numbers straight off the bat,” said Hocking.
Hocking revealed he was looking at buying the just-closed Betta store, but said the business model “wasn’t very conducive for us to take it over”.
He said the collapse of the previous Betta store was down to the three ex-Harvey Norman proprietors experiencing problems negotiating rebates with suppliers and not running a core range of product.