I hate how the one bookshop that should die - the overpriced monopoly university bookshop - is likely the only one that will survive long term.
One of my concerns with retail is more that the lack of strength in suburban shopping strips isn’t reflected in the ever increasing property values.
Near me the vacancy rates are huge, and there’s always shops being re-entered due to non-payment of rent, or restaurants that last 6 months at best. Yet despite that, auctions seem to be successful, people keep buying the shops because it’s prime real estate, but that means taking on huge debt to buy more expensive property that just kills any margins already marginal businesses have.
I dunno what’s the way out of that - do councils need to start cutting rates for small retail businesses to try and keep shopping strips alive? Do they embrace their death and put a clearway in to finish them off?
I suppose the other question is - what is more at risk, the newsagency standing alone in a shopping strip, or the one inside a shopping centre getting an up market redevelopment?
No sympathy for bookshops in Australia, they are mostly responsible for their own demise due to their continued support of restrictions on parallel importation of books published in other countries, which makes the retail price of books in Australia exorbitant when everyone can easily buy books online from overseas substantially cheaper.
The Berkelouw family owned chain of bookshops, Berkelouw Books, Harry Hartog and Book Face, appears to be doing well and continues to slowly expand. Harry Hartog replaced the Co-op store at the ANU after the Co-op store closed late last year.
McLaren has avoided another tobacco advertising controversy by removing branding from one of its sponsors British American Tobacco for this week’s Australian Formula One Grand Prix in Melbourne.
although ferrari are in a bit more of a weird suituation - they have a long term contract where Phillip Morris own the entire car’s branding and they on sell to sponsors.
I was wondering the same thing but not sure about it being strawberry. Iced Vovo is described as being topped with a strip of pink fondant on either side of a strip of raspberry jam and sprinkled with coconut.
The fondant isn’t flavoured but just has pink food dye. So is the milk Raspberry/Coconut flavoured?
I’ve got a bit of inside knowledge on this. It may be a stupid decision but it’s the parent company that made it.
Kimberley Clarke built a giant manufacturing plant in China with the expectations of manufacturing a lot of nappies there. But the sales in the region have not increased as projected. So they’ve decided to shut down manufacturing in other countries and utilise the facilities to cut costs.
The risk is that customers will buy any other brand now because the cheaper brands are also made in China.
Pretty much. Although I do wonder if the “made in Australia” factor is really that much of a selling point for Huggies nappies compared to other brands?
That’s probably also far better for the environment than buying Huggies products shipped in from China!
