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-brande ...

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 cha ...

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. , the company operates ...

(now known as

Specialty Fashion Group 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. , the company operates ...

) and the sale of The Warehouse Australia by

The Warehouse Group The Warehouse Group (TWG) was established by Stephen Tindall in 1982 and is the largest retail group in operation in New Zealand. It is a corporate conglomerate that consists of The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming. History Th ...

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 Go-Lo was a chain of Australian discount variety stores with hundreds of stores throughout Australia. It was part of the largest discount retailer group in Australia. It was owned by Jan Cameron's Retail Adventures along with Sam's Warehouse, ...

(275 stores), Chickenfeed (39 stores), and

(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 ( ), formerly legally registered as Kmart Corporation, now operated by Transformco, is a department-store chain and online retailer in the United States and Territories of the United States, its territories. It operates four remaining Kma ...

Homeart Homeart, also previously known as Copperart, was a national chain of retail stores with outlets in every state in Australia selling mostly homewares, giftware and electrical products. History The company's origins can be traced back to Melbourn ...

and

The Reject Shop The Reject Shop is an Australian discount variety store chain selling a range of goods such as food, snacks, gift cards and party, health and beauty aids, cleaning supplies, storage, kitchenware, homewares and seasonal items in 375 store locat ...

. 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: the process of dealing with or controlling things or people. ** Administrative assistant, traditionally known as a se ...

. 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 Jan Cameron is a New Zealand-Australian businesswoman and formerly Australia's fourth-richest woman. She made her fortune as the founder of the Kathmandu clothing and outdoor equipment company. She currently lives in Bicheno, Tasmania. She r ...

, the former owner of

Kathmandu Kathmandu () is the capital and largest city of Nepal, situated in the central part of the country within the Kathmandu Valley. As per the 2021 Nepal census, it has a population of 845,767 residing in 105,649 households, with approximately 4 mi ...

, 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

. 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

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 the activity undertaken by an organization through which it seeks to define its future direction and makes decision making, decisions such as resource allocation aimed at achieving its intended goals. "Strategy" has many def ...

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 metre 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 metre. Chickenfeed utilized catalogue 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

(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 refers to the employees who leave an organization. The ''turnover rate'' is the percentage of the total workforce that leave over a given period. Organizations and industries typically measure turnover for a fiscal or ...

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) is an organization's long-term commitment of outsourcing its distribution services to third-party logistics businesses. Third-party logistics providers typically specialize in integrated opera ...

provider. Retail Adventures takes advantage of

parallel import Parallel may refer to: Mathematics * Parallel (geometry), two lines in the Euclidean plane which never intersect * Parallel (operator), mathematical operation named after the composition of electrical resistance in parallel circuits Science ...

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

and that most

and Chickenfeed will be rebranded as

. 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 Hobart ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the island state of Tasmania, Australia. Located in Tasmania's south-east on the estuary of the River Derwent, it is the southernmost capital city in Australia. Despite containing nearly hal ...

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

References

External links

Retail Adventures Corporate Website
{{Webarchive, url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110225103001/http://www.retailadventures.com.au/ , date=25 February 2011
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