Exclusive by Patrick Avenell
BRISBANE: WOW Sight & Sound director – retail, Con Nicholas, has revealed that the group is changing one of the group’s major strategies in order to maximise expansion opportunities.
Formerly, all new WOW stores had been developed on land owned by the Queensland-based retail group. The new strategy will see the WOW group opening stores in leased premises. As a result, Nicholas has been scouting new store locations throughout Australia.
“As a company, we’ve made a decision, and in the past it’s stagnated our growth, that every store, the property and the building is owned by the group,” said Nicholas.
“If we want to go ahead and open up quite a few more stores, then we as a company have decided that what we have to do is look at options of leasing as well.
“And that’s what we’re doing at the moment, we are looking at sites where we would take up a leasehold.
“And all of sudden, new opportunities arise, we just came back from South Australia and we just came back from WA and there’s quite a few options available to us now.”
The two major factors triggering this move are the delays associated with receiving development approval on sites already owned and the pragmatic acceptance of Nicholas that the group can’t own every piece of land it chooses. With the choice being between a slowdown in expansion or a proactive change in direction, the group have decided on the latter.