By Claire Reilly
With five stores across metropolitan Sydney, 2nds World has long been known for its factory-seconds and its ‘Tiny Ding, Huge Savings’ tagline.
Despite the success that the 2nds World brand has found in the marketplace, the company decided to rebrand its commercial business earlier this year, with a new message to customers and a new name – Appliance Solutions Direct.
Appliance Solutions Direct (formerly known as 2nds World Commercial Direct) specialises in business-to-business sales of brand-name appliances. But unlike the more widely-known 2nds World chain, there aren’t any factory seconds in sight. According to managing director Peter Hammerman, a new name was necessary to emphasise what the B2B division has to offer.
“It was called 2nds World Commercial Direct,” said Hammerman. “We were finding that real estate agents understood the concept, but some of their property owners assumed that everything that we sell, because its 2nds World Commercial Direct, had to be a factory second,”
“We’ve done such a good job of telling everybody that everything on the shelf has a tiny ding on it. But in actual fact, the majority of products that we put into replacement work and certainly with small developers, it’s all brand new. So we decided to rebrand it in that way.
Although the business might have changed names, the goals behind the operation are still very clear.
“The first idea is to increase volume of the business,” he said. “We live in a volume-rewarded appliance industry, so volume is one of the motivating ideas behind Appliance Solutions.
“We are aiming at small developers, real estate agents and replacement work for small, individual property owners. We offer a very good service, we offer licensed installation and plumbers and electricians. Basically it’s a one-stop shop so a person can ring up and say, ‘My tenant has a broken dishwasher,’ and we’ll go in and fix it.
“We’ll do the whole thing, contact the client or the tenant, and basically take all the worry out for the real estate agents. And it’s working very well so far.”
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Although the company no longer has the recognisable 2nds World name behind the business, there are benefits to the name change.
“It allows us a little bit more freedom,” said Hammerman. “Some suppliers won’t supply us with product because we’re 2nds world. And they do supply this site because it’s not associated with factory seconds. It’s all new product."
Although the Appliance Solutions Direct website is currently just a portal for providing information on the business, Hammerman said that an e-commerce site was in the works.
“Absolutely. We’re in planning stages, so we’re well underway with the planning. One of the practical issues we have is that all our online businesses we have to change platform. It’s a huge job.
“The reason we have to change our platform is because the platform we’ve been using is now some years old and there are restrictions in how it operates, and we want to upgrade and modernise all of our sites.
But for now, the business is performing well.
“It’s grown actually, we were looking at some figures yesterday and it’s growing. It’s only a young business but it’s grown by nearly 30 or 40 per cent.”