Hisense Australia head of marketing, Andre Iannuzzi said the business is working hard to support its partners – retailers, suppliers, contractors and agencies – to work together to navigate COVID-19.
“With the spread of COVID-19 continuing to escalate by the day, so too do the potential economic implications. No industry or sector is immune, and we all have a role to play in doing our best to ‘flatten the curve’. Being acutely aware of this, our business continuity plan has never been more important,” Iannuzzi told Appliance Retailer.
“As one of the country’s leading consumer electronics and home appliance brands, maintaining our operations during this time is not only critical to our business, it is important to our partners. While the outlook may seem grim, great challenges also present great opportunity and continued collaboration with our partners will help us realise this potential together.”
With many Australians now self-isolating and exercising social distancing, reliance on household appliances and consumer electronics is becoming increasingly important, and as a result, there has been a significant spike in sales across the range of Hisense freezers over the past few weeks, and increasing interest in big TV solutions, according to Iannuzzi.
“We are excited about the imminent arrival of our 2020 TV models and we look forward to introducing retailers and consumers to the first wave of new products very soon,” he said.
“While the arrival of new products and stock is important as we look to fulfil consumer demand, ensuring our existing customers are well cared for continues to be a key priority for our business. To this end, we have been working hard behind the scenes to equip our Melbourne-based Hisense customer care team to work from home. This is an important transition as it means we can continue to provide Hisense customers with local service support during this challenging time, whilst maintaining the health and wellbeing of our team.
“Although it is not necessarily business as usual at Hisense Australia, we are open for business. These are unprecedented times and we are confident that with a calm, considered and collaborative approach we all come out the other side, perhaps even better for it.”