DSG Holdings Australia Pty Ltd, trading as Discount Superstores Group was a discount variety retailer in Australia, formed in 2013 following the liquidation of former company Retail Adventures. It owned the
Sam's Warehouse
Sam's Warehouse was an Australian brand of discount retail stores, similar to Crazy Clark's. It was founded in 2008 after The Warehouse sold its Australian operations to Australian Discount Retail, and the stores were required to be re-branded ...
and
Crazy Clark's
Crazy Clark's Discount Variety Store was an Australian company that operated over 150 discount variety stores in its chain, across Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Western Australia. The company also owned and operated a chai ...
brands, operating 143 stores. It is owned by Australian-New Zealand businesswoman Jan Cameron. It was announced on 1 July 2014 that the chain has entered receivership for the fourth time in 8 years.
History
Australian Discount Retail was formed in 2005 after the sale of the discount division of
Miller's Retail
City Chic Collective () (CCC), founded as Miller's Retail in 1992, and rebranded in December 2006 to Specialty Fashion Group, is an Australian retail clothing company. It is headquartered in the Sydney suburb of Alexandria.
Miller's Retail
Mi ...
(now known as
Specialty Fashion Group) and the sale of The Warehouse Australia by
The Warehouse Group
The Warehouse Group (TWG) was founded by Stephen Tindall in 1982, and is the largest retail group operating in New Zealand. It is a corporate group that consists of The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery, Torpedo7, Noel Leeming, 1-day and TheMark ...
New Zealand to private equity firms Catalyst and CHAMP. Catalyst and CHAMP reportedly paid
A$200 million which was funded by NAB Capital, ANZ and BOS International. The combined entity was Australia's leading discount variety retailer with revenues nearing $1 billion and a store presence in every state and territory in the country.
The company traded under the household names
Go-Lo /
Crazy Clark's
Crazy Clark's Discount Variety Store was an Australian company that operated over 150 discount variety stores in its chain, across Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Western Australia. The company also owned and operated a chai ...
(275 stores),
Chickenfeed (39 stores), and
Sam's Warehouse
Sam's Warehouse was an Australian brand of discount retail stores, similar to Crazy Clark's. It was founded in 2008 after The Warehouse sold its Australian operations to Australian Discount Retail, and the stores were required to be re-branded ...
(99 stores). In 2008 the company rebranded all The Warehouse stores as Sam's Warehouse as a condition of sale from The Warehouse New Zealand.
The main competitors of Australian Discount Retail included
Kmart
Kmart Corporation ( , doing business as Kmart and stylized as kmart) is an American retail company that owns a chain of big box department stores. The company is headquartered in Hoffman Estates, Illinois, United States.
The company was inco ...
,
Homeart and
The Reject Shop.
On 20 January 2009 the Board of Australian Discount Retail has placed the company in voluntary
administration
Administration may refer to:
Management of organizations
* Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal
** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...
. Staff were assured their entitlements are safe, but the future of their employment would not be known for months as a buyer was sought for the business. The size and scale of ADR makes this the biggest retail collapse Australian business in over five years.
On 23 March 2009 it was announced that the company had been sold to Retail Adventures Pty Ltd, a company owned by Australian millionaire
Jan Cameron, the former owner of
Kathmandu
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, for an undisclosed sum. The sale guaranteed the 2,500 permanent and 7,500 casual jobs under ADR.
On 27 October 2012, Retail Adventures Pty Ltd was placed into
administration
Administration may refer to:
Management of organizations
* Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal
** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...
. Owner Jan Cameron was granted license to operate the viable section of the business. 950 staff were expected to lose their jobs, while 5000 full-time staff at 238 stores were to remain. The only brands that survived were Crazy Clark's and Sam's Warehouse; Chickenfeed shut down its stores across Tasmania and Victoria, with the remaining 6 stores sold to
The Reject Shop in May 2013.
In March 2013, Jan Cameron purchased the remaining viable sections of the business from the administrators for $59 million AUD following extensive restructuring, forming a new company DSG Holdings Australia Pty Ltd which traded under the name the Discount Superstores Group.
Project Simplify
Project Simplify was a long-term
strategic plan
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals.
It may also extend to control mechanisms for guiding the implementation of the s ...
initiated by Jan Cameron and David Young since the acquisition of ADR in 2009. Young and his colleagues believed that the business was too complicated, and were planning a number of changes to be carried out by 2013.
Stocking strategy
Retail Adventures focuses on the
Pareto principle, rather than strategies like sales per square meter and department performance. David Young explains "That core range is built on the 80-20 principle: 20 percent of our range will give us 80 percent of our business." In this way, the company focuses on their core merchandise range and seasonal demand is what drives the rest of the business platform. This in turn means that the specific stock will vary around the country, due to each individual store's ability to be flexible in promotion, planning and stock display.
Chickenfeed brand
Each of the four subsidiaries of Retail Adventures entered the acquisition with individual strategies and slogans. Retail Adventures had plans to merge all of their counterparts into Chickenfeed, with the slogan "Bargains with a Smile". Chickenfeed retailers on average outperformed all the other markets owned by Retail Adventures by at least 30% per square meter. Chickenfeed utilized catalog advertising approximately 25% less than its counterparts, and used television advertisements as their main marketing venture, working with 4–5 different product commercials. The success seen from these community strategies that Chickenfeed had utilized is what Retail Adventures planned to use for each of its brands.
However, considering the company is now in
administration
Administration may refer to:
Management of organizations
* Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal
** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...
(see
Retail Adventures#Administration), the company will instead be rebranding all Chickenfeed stores as Crazy Clark's.
Employee retention
The retail industry generally suffers from a high
staff turnover
In human resources, turnover is the act of replacing an employee with a new employee. Partings between organizations and employees may consist of termination, retirement, death, interagency transfers, and resignations.Trip, R. (n.d.). Turnover-St ...
rate. As part of "Project Simplify", Retail Adventures is beginning to offer training, development programs and potential career development to its employees. Employment opportunities which open up within the company are usually notified to the current staff through emails and company bulletins to encourage them to move up while staying within the company.
Supply chain
As part of "Project Simplify", Retail Adventures plans to utilize its unused physical space. The company is looking to either add 150 Chickenfeed stores to the brand, or become a
third-party logistics
Third-party logistics (abbreviated as 3PL, or TPL) in logistics and supply chain management is an organization's use of third-party businesses to outsource elements of its distribution, warehousing, and fulfillment services.
Third-party logisti ...
provider. Retail Adventures takes advantage of
parallel import
A parallel import is a non-counterfeit product imported from another country without the permission of the intellectual property owner. Parallel imports are often referred to as grey product and are implicated in issues of international trade, ...
ing as a way to help keep overall costs down because of the lack of trading complexities. Whilst maintaining currently buying techniques, the company is in the process of upgrading its technologies to better manage aspects such as allocation, forecasting and replenishment of its merchandise.
Administration
In October 2012, it was announced the company was going into voluntary
administration
Administration may refer to:
Management of organizations
* Management, the act of directing people towards accomplishing a goal
** Administrative Assistant, traditionally known as a Secretary, or also known as an administrative officer, administ ...
and that most
Go-Lo and
Chickenfeed will be rebranded as
Crazy Clark's
Crazy Clark's Discount Variety Store was an Australian company that operated over 150 discount variety stores in its chain, across Queensland, New South Wales, Northern Territory and Western Australia. The company also owned and operated a chai ...
. Earlier in October, news outlets had reported that Retail Adventures owed landlords thousands of dollars in unpaid rent.
The move to administration was not unexpected - in late 2012 Retail Adventures had begun closing several stores across Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria, including almost 20 Chickenfeed stores. Some of these closures were forced, after Chickenfeed stores in
Launceston and
Hobart were reclaimed by landlords because of unpaid rent. However, prior to rebranding occurring, it was announced that all Tasmanian Chickenfeed stores would close.
The administrators allowed Discount Superstores Holdings Pty Ltd to enter into a license agreement to run the majority of the stores until an agreement between the administrators, the business and its creditors finalised the debt that Retail Adventures owed. Discount Superstores Group, ran by Jan Cameron, purchased the entire remaining assets of Crazy Clark's and Sam's Warehouse for $59 million AUD in February 2013. In July 2014, it was announced Discount Superstores Group had also collapsed, entering receivership.
The end of the line for Jan Cameron’s Retail Adventures
11 August 2014
See also
*Big W
Big W (stylized as BIG W) is an Australian chain of discount department stores, which was founded in regional New South Wales in 1964. The company is a division of Woolworths Group and as at 2019 operated 176 stores, with around 22,000 employ ...
* Homeart
*Target Australia
Target Australia Pty Ltd (formerly Lindsay's and Lindsay's Target, formerly stylised as Target. and doing business as Target and Target Australia) is a department store chain owned by Australian retail conglomerate Wesfarmers. Target stocks c ...
References
{{reflist
External links
Retail Adventures Corporate Website
Australian Discount Retail Corporate Website
Defunct retail companies of Australia
Australian companies established in 2013
Retail companies established in 2013
Retail companies disestablished in 2014
Discount stores of Australia
Companies based in Sydney
Australian companies disestablished in 2014