JB Hi-Fi CEO Richard Murray has confirmed the importance of the company’s omni-channel strategy chiding low-cost pure-play online players such as Kogan.
Speaking about the growth of online sales within the business during Covid-19, Murray reflected on the results that show that online sales now represent 7.3% and 7.5% of sales within the JB Hi-Fi and The Good Guys businesses, respectively.
When asked whether Covid-19 will be a tipping point for online sales moving forward, Murray confirmed that online was an important part of the business – representing more the icing and not the cake as such – when it came to pleasing his customers across both retail brands.
“I appreciate the online-only retailers want to talk about online only, but as an omni-channel retailer with a number of channels, we just want to make sure our customers enjoy shopping with us. Our job is to delight customers however they would like to shop with us. It is not about just online or just in-store, it is the trust that both brands have built up with their customers over decades and how we can reinforce this when they engage with us – sometimes they want a low-involvement purchase and they want it shipped quickly and at other times – they want to come in store because they are renovating or they are purchasing a premium item they really want to understand.”
Speaking about the challenges associated with the closure of three Good Guys stores in Canberra late last week, Murray said that he effectively has “322 crisis centres that are called stores”.
“We dispatch from store, and [due to the Electrolux Khapra Beetle issue] our distribution centre at Marsden Park in Sydney is shut, so we can pivot to dispatching bulky goods from stores – it is more efficient to do it from a centralised warehouse, but we are a diverse retailer with a range of solutions to maximise the outcome. Other than a small amount of deliveries that come from an online warehouse in Melbourne, the vast majority of online purchases under 20kg come from our store network and we have then chosen Toll depots near these stores and we work very hard to achieve those fulfilment times.”