Myer trumps Kogan but online venture more lost than found

Analysis by Patrick Avenell

GOLD COAST, QLD: If ever there was a pyrrhic victory to be regretted, it’s Myer’s win over Kogan in the bet to launch an online site out of China.

Back in late 2010, Kogan taunted Myer and Harvey Norman, saying that he was so sure these two traditional retailers would not follow through on threats to open online sites to avoid the GST on sub-$1,000 products that he was prepared to promote them if they did.

Well, Kogan has lost this bet and paid up: there’s an ad for Myer’s new myfind.com site at kogan.com, but this loss is as close to a victory as possible, with Myer’s site so poor that it barely registers as a legitimate site.

When Current.com.au visited the site this morning, myfind.com was offering just two consumer electronics products: an Acer PC and an eMachine PC. There was also a smattering of saucepans and frypans in the Homewares section and some toys under the Kids subheading.

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Not even Myer’s key category, fashion, could save this site from obscurity, with so little on offer it actually does look as though this site was set up solely to prove Kogan wrong.

The tragedy in this is that Myer is a great store with a rich history in the Australian marketplace. If they took online trading seriously, with the talent it has at its disposal, a Myer online offering could be very substantial and convincing, and then winning against Kogan might mean more than just a derisive link on a webpage.

I’m very keen to know what our readers think of myfind.com. Please leave your comments below.

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