By Martin Vedris
MELBOURNE: Daily stock clearance website, Catch Of The Day, sells excess or run out stock at reduced prices and the site’s co-owner, Gabby Leibovich promises to clear stock for vendors, overnight.
Leibovich says Catch Of The Day is rapidly becoming a tool for suppliers.
“We are here to help vendors get rid of their excess stock, their end of lines, their refurbished stock, their damaged boxes, everyone’s got problems, everyone’s got stock that sits in their warehouse, they’re stuck with it. New models get released all the time, prices drop all the time, and vendors are under pressure to quit stock quickly.
“The reason suppliers like to deal with us is that we don’t affect the market for a long period … they don’t like to disturb the market. We only affect the market for 24 hours and within 24 hours we can sell 1,000 laptops, or 2,000 hard drives, or 1,000 televisions.
Some major brands featured recently on Catch Of The Day include: Toshiba, Philips, Breville, Lenovo, Asus, Panasonic, Mio, HP, Sandisk, TDK, Nokia, Doro and Cygnett.
“We do not require accounts and all purchases will be paid by direct deposit prior to shipment,” Leibovich said.
Leibovich said he was an “audio visual retail operator for 20 years” and he and his brother Hezi started Catch Of The Day four years ago, in a garage. The garage is a lot bigger now.
“We started in a garage four years ago. The idea just came up. Now we have a staff of 35 people and we work from a building of 4,000 square metres, we are in the BRW Fastest Growing 100 Companies list, and Catch Of The Day right now is Australia’s second most viewed internet department store — these are figures from Hitwise, they’re not my numbers.”
The Leibovich brothers also run another internet retail site called Daily Deals, which Leibovich said is one of the largest infomercial sellers in Australia with regular morning TV spots. Daily Deals also operates a physical retail outlet from itswarehouse in Mulgrave, Victoria.
“We moved into large premises that had a great warehouse,” Leibovich said. “There was also the opportunity to open a retail outlet and we said ‘why not’. Retail is not something we concentrate on, we concentrate on the internet, but the store gives consumers that come off the street and those who buy online, as well as suppliers, the little bit of security to know that we’re a serious company … if something goes wrong you know who you can approach.”
And the approach is what Leibovich wants. He wants to be known as the industry’s quick turn around merchant that consumers can rely on and suppliers can call on to help them out.
“Suppliers want to clear their stock very quickly. In many cases suppliers will come to us at the end of the month with a deal but they want the sale invoiced before the end of the month so they can meet targets of get bonuses, or whatever the case may be. So the deals are often done on the spot.
“For vendors who want to clear excess stock straight away, no other company in the market can move the stock so quickly.”