Announces new store members, additions to head office and enhanced business operations.
Bi-Rite Home Appliances was host to more than 200 members and suppliers at its 6th national conference on the Gold Coast, QLD, over the weekend.
The conference, themed The Challenging Change, kicked off with a welcome dinner, followed by support office presentations and supplier trade show on day two and day three. The presentation from Bi-Rite’s AK Sacur incorporated a business review of the past 12 months, highlighting new members joining the Group and enhanced operations in response to changing market conditions.
Bi-Rite’s Hamza Hussein mentioned that the work that the support office was doing to aid members in running an efficient and profitable business was key to their success and they are now reaping the rewards with six new members joining them in the coming months.
Bi-Rite has welcomed former Leading Appliances (LA) member in Mansfield, VIC in February of this year, and will be joined by another four former LA members, effective from October – Kyogle (NSW), Narrabri and Moree (NSW), Katherine (NT) and Warrack Furnishings (VIC). A member in Kangaroo Island (SA) will be Joining Bi-Rite as well.
Bi-Rite has also strengthened its support office team with four new appointments. Adam Scutts and Sufian Latif who are leading system support for members with a great background in both technical support and user testing. Larry Waldron joins as an online customer sales representative, responsible for communication with customers on the Bi-Rite website, Facebook, as well as product order management. Larry has great experience in this role from his previous employment at The Electric Discounter. Damon Taylor is heading up the Group’s digital and web presence and has experience from Kawasaki and independent work.
Attendees at the Bi-Rite conference held on the Gold Coast
Bi-Rite has upgraded its internal systems and software to better service its members with a new all-encompassing integrated solution, incorporating point of sale, inventory and back end support. Hussein said the system has been in development over the last few years and will change the way business is done moving forward.
The transition to a cloud-based system aims to minimise disruption to transactions in-store and eliminate issues with data integrity. The solution has been tried and tested in pilot stores and a roll out process is underway for the next 8 months, with a mobile-friendly version now available to improve efficiency, greater access to the system and provide new ways of engaging with customers.
The new system offers an automatic competitor pricing system, in-store catalogue tickets, improved stock management, streamlined core ranging strategy for product offering, as well as sales dashboards which provide a snapshot of sales trends and figures, most popular SKUs and identifies aged models for clearance stock.
Following the theme of the conference, Hussein discussed the importance of understanding the rate of change in today’s retail environment, not only with products but businesses and services also.
He cited a range of case studies that highlighted the demise of businesses due to failure of adapting to market conditions and responding to customer trends, as well as business success stories from the implementation of a turnaround strategy that responds to customer needs. Businesses need to be proactive to keep up with the pace of change, learn from previous market landscape shifts and adapt to major trends, such as the rise in digital transformation.
Damon Taylor discussed the Group’s marketing strategy driven by Know, Like, Trust. The Group is extending its reach to new customers through radio, TV and print media at a local level and emails, text messages, web applications and social media at a national level. There has been further investment in digital channels such as Google shopping, Google search, Google ads, Google My Business, Facebook ads, YouTube ads, Instagram ads, as well as Yelp and Bing search engines. There is an increased focus on EDMs showcasing single product category (i.e. TVs, microwaves), welcome emails to customers, which provide an opportunity for more sales and a push for Google reviews as social proof and improved SEO results.
Hussein said, “I have no doubt in the coming months we will have a number of members show interest in our group. We aren’t the same business we were 12 months ago, and we won’t be the same business we are now in 12 months’ time.”