Remember Brashs? How could we forget Tony Barber, host of Sale of the Century and Australian Jeopardy!, quizzing customers in his role as Brashs’ brash spokesbrasher? UnderCurrent stumbled upon this classic spot this week and it brought to mind an interesting anecdote about the dearly departed retail chain:
The story goes that in the months leading up to its first bout of administration in 1995, Brashs management summoned the 100-year-old retailer’s biggest suppliers into a hotel conference room to disclose the company’s parlous state. A representative of management told the assembled MDs, CEOs and sales directors that should Brashs close, the shockwaves would reverberate to its suppliers’ bottom line, meaning it was in everyone’s best interest for the suppliers to make a donation, for want of a better word, to bail out the retailer.
There were charts and diagrams and graphs where a line moves up and down and up and then eventually, terminally down and envelopes were handed out indicating that based on Brashs’ turnover with the supplier, this was the amount they were being asked to chip in.
Not unsurprisingly, these was a healthy dose of scepticism from the assembled brands, and the video above gives an idea of who some of them might be, but in the end, most of these suppliers stumped up the cash to ‘save’ Brashs, only for the retailer to collapse a short while later.
There was a short-lived reprieve for Brashs when it was purchased by Singaporean retailer Ong Beng Seng for $40 million, though the market had moved on from broad hi-fi chains and Brashs’ final death throes came three years later, when $80 million of debt finally sank the famous retail brand.