Price erosion, grey importing, online retail, customer service, price gouging, exclusive distribution, product recalls, pro forma, franchise fees, rebates and Ruslan Kogan — these are some of the hot button issues that always lead to strong opinions whenever we publish a story on Current.com.au.

Whether it’s in private emails, on the phone, in person or in the comments box at the bottom of every article, our readers have a lot of interesting — often controversial — things to say about the retail appliance and electronics sector.

In the past, the team on Current.com.au has been more likely to turn these rants well-founded opinions into a future story. We’d like to take out the middleman and invite more members of the industry to communicate directly with our hundreds of thousands of readers. This includes suppliers, retailers, analysts, observers, consumers — anyone really.

We’ve started a new Opinion category in our headers bar at the top of Current.com.au — this will be the new home for all our Opinion, Commentary and Analysis articles and features. It will also be the home of our guest commentary and opposite the editorial (OP/ED) contributions.

If you have something you’d like to say about the industry — a trend you love, a category you hate, a great experience on a training day, a terrible conference you paid a fortune to attend — this is your opportunity.

We only have three ground rules:

-No advertising spiel: all product managers think their dishwasher is the best. Instead of reading about a sleek and stylish wash cycle, tell us about what the industry is doing to improve water efficiency and how those advances can be sold to consumers.

-Exclusivity is preferred: just like Miele keeps up its prices by selling on a pro forma model, we are holding up our originality by asking that you don’t simply send us the same PR guff you’ve shopped to all the other websites.

AND THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE:

-Be interesting.

You can send emailed submissions to editorial@current.com.au and, to make it really easy, you can call me on 02 8586 6165 and I’ll transcribe it for you.

Patrick Avenell
Editor
Current.com.au