Thread: Bunnings dumbing down it's stock?

Originally Posted by LGS

I've been trying to think of a phrase that can sum up life in Oz in the new Millenium and I think KG and Seb have done it for me.
There's a dichotomy here that should be able to be resolved, but never will.
1. I regard myself as an Australian, with all the stereotypes and qualities that being Australian involves, including helping out yer mates, honesty integrity and so on.
2. I'm all right Jack, stay away from my stack.

Publically listed companies are around to make profit for their shareholders. If they do not provide growth in earnings every quarter, they lose value and earn less. The fact that the value has no real relationship to actual worth is another topic. There are seberal ways to ensure that profit continues to increase and one is to accept that you can't get any more market share and that operating costs must decrease. Hence, cheaper products and lower staff numbers and/or benefits.
So here we are, saying on one hand that we should be outraged by cheap imports pushing us out of a market we used to do well in and that people should not be shafted and should be entitled to all the things their parents had and then some.
BUT...
we turn the other way when its our income or lifestyle that may suffer, because the perceived growth of a company which openly and flagrantly defies our ideals starts to go down. Hey, I'm doing all right who cares about everyone else.
It's like, my kids don't take drugs, everyone else has the problem - not my issue.
So.. life in the new millenium for Australians is be ruthless, everybody else is.
I don't subscribe to this belief and frankly, it makes me sick. Somewhere, someone has to make a stand. Why not us??

LGS

Your desire to stand for what you believe is commendable, LGS. If we all did, the world would be a better place. The problem I can see in your and many other posts, however, is a lack of clear understanding of what you really want to stand for. If our choices are emotional instead of rational, we are no better than people willing to kill each other because they believe in different prayer books. And unfortunately they are prepared to take the "stand for what you believe" principle to the point of blowing up themselves and/or everybody else. Which does not make the world a better place.

I respectfully suggest that this thread is not really about woodworking (as many have pointed out, Bunnings sell flowers and manure also ) but about the economy and our way to deal with it as a society. Maybe we should move the discussion to a thread about APEC and its relevance .

Ahh Globalisation!

How come, everyone whinges about the price of tools in the USA versus here, but also complains about chinese tools here. I can buy a dewalt 18v drill in the US for $250 or $500 here, so who's doing the ripping off?

If the name brand manufacturers hadnt been ripping us off blind for so long, the chinese wouldnt have got such a market. Try get a part for your senco, paslode, Bosche, Hilti, and prepared to be made an example of - before you get it fitted!

BTW, Bunnings didnt start the chinese tool wars - China did, and GMC and others. remember when Makita would give you a 90 day warranty, and GMC came out with a 2 yr warranty - cant see how a bit of healthy competition can possibly be bad for consumers. this can be seen with branded tools now, coming down in price at a rapid rate of knots - competition is good - cosy profit gauging is bad.

The burbs are awash with tools - viva la china!

Ha ha guys, this is surely the best thread in the whole site.
Best not because of any particularly inspiring content but because it exposes our way of thinking. Rather unusual I must say.

Perhaps we must remind ourselves that tools, like any other merchandise are the result of a market and that the market is created by offer and demand. "Good" Australian made or US made or European made or Japanese made as opposed to "bad" Chinese made is a strange view of things. Manufacturers produce quality only if they have a market for it and produce junk when they have a demand for it. To think in Makita as an inspiring good grandpa who delights in producing quality and in Ozito as a devious Chinese who desires only evil and destruction is real funny, and so is thinking in a "bad" Bunnings and "good" Gasweld, Total Tools, Glenford tools or whoever you classify as 'good'.

You like me are part of a market that requires tools and materials of different quality, One day you are in demand for a professional tool to use a lot and keep forever, the next day you are happy to buy that Chinese knock off jackhammer for $300 in stead of $1500 just to get that one-off-job done.
Wrong?
Debatable, we get thousands of containers of tools who probably have infringed patents yet our governments don't do anything about it. The reasons behind it are not simple and deserve a separate analysis yet lets make a comparison with the "protest" that are going on during the APEC summit.

People come from around the world to protest against evil Bush and evil Howard, who sent troops to Iraq and refuse to let go. Hey I don't like the war in Iraq either, in fact I think Iraq was better off with Sadam, and if left to their own devices Iraqis would re-enthrone Sadam or a clone. I strongly suggest that they deserve all they got plus two Sadam one for each religious faction.

Yet back to protesters. we have in Sydney the president of China and Russia, countries who imprisons dissenters, make them disappear and recycle them for their organs, yet no one hears a peep about them. Russia has just sold a lot of war material to Indonesia, a potential enemy, yet you hear no noises about it.

So perhaps we are not very discerning when it comes to our feelings and when it comes to target our enemies, in fact this days enemies morph into friends so quickly we soon loose track. Who remembers when "made in Japan" was the worst junk you could possibly buy? Then it was Taiwan, then Korea, soon it will be China. How long until China made will be a desirable lable and the junk will come from Pakistan?

Buy what you need, when you need it, from who is offering it and forget all those sentimentalism of the good old days. There is a market for high quality and you have access to it despite Bunnings. There is a growing market for middle of the road and low quality, there is ample access to it and this should not offend you. After all what do you care what others buy? Are you also offended by Daewoo cars?
To extrapolate and speculate that we will be swamped by Chinese junk and never able to buy good stuff is a waste of energy besides being inaccurate. If there is a market for high quality it will be covered by someone.
If everything else fails there is e-bay.

One thing to keep in mind is that media and governments, keep our attention and our vote using very simple tactics. Media by feeding us a constant barrage of bad news, anxious and depressed viewers and listeners and readers are the best customers to feed them advertising. Government feed us fear in ever increasing quantities. A scared voter is a voter that can be influenced. There is even a new religion to that effect. Man Made Global Warming. It is a load of cr@# yet if you disagree you are a heretic.

OK I am off to Bunnings to buy some battenscrews made in China. I will buy a couple extra in case one brakes.....Oops! I just noticed that my wok is from Ikea

Originally Posted by Marc

.

One thing to keep in mind is that media and governments, keep our attention and our vote using very simple tactics. Media by feeding us a constant barrage of bad news, anxious and depressed viewers and listeners and readers are the best customers to feed them advertising. Government feed us fear in ever increasing quantities. A scared voter is a voter that can be influenced. There is even a new religion to that effect. Man Made Global Warming. It is a load of cr@# yet if you disagree you are a heretic.

See what I was talking about, LGS? Fact and faith, and where does the crap begins and ends? Death to the infidels!

"anxious and depressed viewers and listeners and readers are the best customers to feed them advertising"
True (to a point). If you are feeling down, buy my product and you will feel better.

"Media by feeding us a constant barrage of bad news"
False. Depressed people do not buy. People want feel good stories. Media do not want to drop their ratings, otherwise they do not have the audience to feed advertisements to.

"A scared voter is a voter that can be influenced."
True. When there are no enemies, they need to be invented. Plenty of examples in history.

"Man Made Global Warming. It is a load of cr@# yet if you disagree you are a heretic."
False. Even those scientists who play down the consequences for political reasons have begrudgingly admitted that the evidence is now incontrovertible.

And so on.

Uhh.. Sorry to stir up a hornets nest. (Sorry hornets are American and European, maybe a mud dauber wasps nest?)

I was actually trying to make the point that, while we expect a standard of living appropriate to our perception, we are, in our neverending quest to feather our own nests, prepared to take with one hand, then take with the other. This is a universal phenomenon, but I don't think its a sustainable one.
The difference between the way people live and work in Europe as oppsosed to America is vast. Yet "globalisation" suggests that the American/Chinese model is the correct one to follow. I do not believe this.
My point is that you can't have it both ways and people should come first. They don't and we are our own worst enemy. Why do we get massive sell offs on the Stock Exchange? Because people become scared that the company they have invested in is overvalued and take profit that probably isn't really there. Chris Skase made a mint out of overvalueing his companies. And we won't even mention the little roly poly Pom.
If you want fair and equitable working conditions including salary and full employment , then buy shares in companies that do not have these values, you're creating your own demise! We are the ones demanding ever increasing price decreases, we are the ones who allow kids in other lands to be worked for less than minimum wage.
Marc, without getting into a bun fight, perhaps you could ask Mattel about Chinese manufacturing??
Tools are like any other commodity, that is so, but there are trade offs in all aspects of the economy, money seems to me to be the least important to a thriving community as opposesd to a thriving economy.

LGS

Originally Posted by Frank&Earnest

....... People want feel good stories.

Not for a minute. Good news do not sell, bad news sell.
War sells, fear, accidents, disasters, crashes, murder, fraud etc.
And we want our politicians to tell us how bad it is and how they will fix it.
The good news of a never better economy does not sell, and so you need a Tampa "disaster" to grab voters attention.
Politicians have invented a new attention seeking jingle to shake in front of voters: Man made global warming. I call it a religion.
Get informed so that we won’t have to worry about prosecution for “Global Warming-Denial” hate speech, so that a global collectivist carbon tax wealth-confiscation can be averted.

Read here:
http://leaningstraightup.com/2007/03...swindle-video/

Originally Posted by Frank&Earnest

See what I was talking about, LGS? Fact and faith, and where does the crap begins and ends? Death to the infidels!

"anxious and depressed viewers and listeners and readers are the best customers to feed them advertising"
True (to a point). If you are feeling down, buy my product and you will feel better.

"Media by feeding us a constant barrage of bad news"
False. Depressed people do not buy. People want feel good stories. Media do not want to drop their ratings, otherwise they do not have the audience to feed advertisements to.

"A scared voter is a voter that can be influenced."
True. When there are no enemies, they need to be invented. Plenty of examples in history.

"Man Made Global Warming. It is a load of cr@# yet if you disagree you are a heretic."
False. Even those scientists who play down the consequences for political reasons have begrudgingly admitted that the evidence is now incontrovertible.

And so on.

Sorry but you are wrong on your last point It is not incontrovertible because that is exactly what I am doing.

The whole Global Warming fad has got mixed up with Climate Change and that may well be incontrovertible.
Yes the planet is getting warmer but it is not yet a fact that we are the cause. That assertion is very open to debate and unfortunately anyone who want to debate or investigate this question further is treated like a leper.
How many Govt grants do you think are available for people trying to disprove Global Warming? Not many i suspect as going against the tide of idiocy is not cool these days.

These targets of our fear like terrorists and global warming are just constructed tools for Govt and Corporations to use as a means of manipulation us to do as they wish.
Like green light bulbs you think Phillips or other manufacturers would not rather sell you a $7 light bulb than a 50c one by playing on your false guilt for causing the end to Polar Bears or islands sinking in the pacific.

In a hundred or 300 years the politicians will be moaning about the global freezing caused by peoples selfish use of low consumption light bulbs and fining people for not creating greenhouse gasses.

Weather goes through complex and very long cycles of heating and cooling that we have little or no understanding of and it is simplistic to attribute all this to driving cars and leaving the lights on. Wake up and smell the propaganda burning.
I am not suggesting we continue to use resources as we have done for the last 100 years but dont let this green cancer eat away at common sense and rational debate.

You might also look at exactly how much you do contribute to the problem by thinking about the following.
It is said that if all sources of Heat and Greenhouse gass polution in Aust were turned of today and never turned on again it would take China only 10 months to increase its pollution to offset our reduction. Now how much good does the green lightbulb do ?

The real issue here is rampant population growth and unless it is addressed the rest is simply a waste of time.

Rgds

Ross

Originally Posted by Marc

Not for a minute. Good news do not sell, bad news sell.
War sells, fear, accidents, disasters, crashes, murder, fraud etc.

I knew you would say that, I just hoped you would not.
"Sensational" sells, yes. "bad" is a value judgment. Would you like journalists not to report the Ghan crash because it is "bad"? What is bad is journalists sensationalising what it is not.

And we want our politicians to tell us how bad it is and how they will fix it.

The good news of a never better economy does not sell, and so you need a Tampa "disaster" to grab voters attention.

Already agreed on that one.

Politicians have invented a new attention seeking jingle to shake in front of voters: Man made global warming.

Not sure about this one, but it appears to me that apart a few Greens no politician in his right mind really would have wanted anything to do with this.

I call it a religion.

Fine with me.

Get informed so that we won’t have to worry about prosecution for “Global Warming-Denial” hate speech, so that a global collectivist carbon tax wealth-confiscation can be averted.

Read here:
http://leaningstraightup.com/2007/03...swindle-video/

I would not dream to question your Bible. I respect all religions.

Originally Posted by Different

Sorry but you are wrong on your last point It is not incontrovertible because that is exactly what I am doing.

The whole Global Warming fad has got mixed up with Climate Change and that may well be incontrovertible.
Yes the planet is getting warmer but it is not yet a fact that we are the cause. That assertion is very open to debate and unfortunately anyone who want to debate or investigate this question further is treated like a leper.

After the recent studies committed and paid by them, both Howard and Bush have publicly admitted that it can not be denied that we are a cause. Nobody in their right mind has ever said that we are definitely the cause. If it is good enough evidence for them, it is good enough for me.

The real issue here is rampant population growth and unless it is addressed the rest is simply a waste of time.

You just made my point.

Like green light bulbs you think Phillips or other manufacturers would not rather sell you a $7 light bulb than a 50c one by playing on your false guilt for causing the end to Polar Bears or islands sinking in the pacific.

I have just a few months ago changed a Philips fluorescent light that had lasted more than 11 years (I had written the date on it) and for all that time consumed 20W instead of 100W. If you do not accept new technology for fear of giving in to "false guilt" you might try using candles...

"Sensational" sells, yes. "bad" is a value judgment. Would you like journalists not to report the Ghan crash because it is "bad"? What is bad is journalists sensationalising what it is not.

A bit of semantics there, however all experiments tried and re-tried to broadcast "good" news have all failed. People in general do not want good news, they want bad ones.
Bad news are serious news, good news are not really serious stuff.
And there is a reason for that too, even when most people do not want to hear about it.

For some 100 years now and perhaps more, man has been indoctrinated into believing that most of his personal condition is due to external forces out of his control. Bad news help to support this belief in the sense that it both reaffirms the feeling of no guilt for present condition (since all is so bad right?it's not my fault I don't have enough money) and also allows some feel good since the fire was in someone else's house not ours.

Good news produce anxiety and the idea to have missed out, since if things are rosy how come I am doing so poorly? It is much more reassuring to hear of all the bad since "I am just above all that". That is why successful people must be bad and poor people must be virtuous.

What does Bunnings product range have to do with good/bad/sensational or other type of news and global warming.

Don't hijack a interesting debate so please keep to the topic.

Peter.

I haven't read the entire thread but would like to make a comment or two and apologise beforehand if they have been touched on before.

Bunnings is what is known as a "category buster". This is essentially a store that runs everyone else out of town and then has a near enough monopoly within their chosen market. Some may think that laudable as prices drop, but therein lays the problem. They achieve their aim then find that they cannot lift their net earnings due to the limitation of the local market. Their choices are to broaden that market or lower their internal overheads, at that point the customer starts to suffer and they are most probably at that point now.

Every time we go into Bunnings and take advantage of their offer to shoot another retailer via the 10% offer we effectively are cutting our own throat in regards to future viable shopping options. Now some may see this as a valid method of marketing and some may not, it is your choice, but be aware of what is happening and what you are doing.

I wonder how long it will be before Bunnings goes online in a big way and using the savings there, starts to go upmarket offering stuff they can't do within their retail network due to overheads. This will have two effects, they will do the same thing as they have done in the retail street sector and they will blow every other online retailer out of the market and some will say we are better off. We live in the world we create, it is our choice entirely.

Originally Posted by Mini

I haven't read the entire thread but would like to make a comment or two and apologise beforehand if they have been touched on before.

Bunnings is what is known as a "category buster". This is essentially a store that runs everyone else out of town and then has a near enough monopoly within their chosen market. Some may think that laudable as prices drop, but therein lays the problem. They achieve their aim then find that they cannot lift their net earnings due to the limitation of the local market. Their choices are to broaden that market or lower their internal overheads, at that point the customer starts to suffer and they are most probably at that point now.

Every time we go into Bunnings and take advantage of their offer to shoot another retailer via the 10% offer we effectively are cutting our own throat in regards to future viable shopping options. Now some may see this as a valid method of marketing and some may not, it is your choice, but be aware of what is happening and what you are doing.

I wonder how long it will be before Bunnings goes online in a big way and using the savings there, starts to go upmarket offering stuff they can't do within their retail network due to overheads. This will have two effects, they will do the same thing as they have done in the retail street sector and they will blow every other online retailer out of the market and some will say we are better off. We live in the world we create, it is our choice entirely.

Your analysis at the local level is essentially correct. You have left out the other obvious choice for lifting earnings once achieved quasi-monopoly status, lifting prices, but this does not change the point. As regards the overall outcome, on the other hand, it is extremely unlikely that a retailer, however big, will have the devastating power you envisage. The world is a big place, and the manufacturers can, and do, also go online and cut off the middlemen.

"Media by feeding us a constant barrage of bad news, anxious and depressed viewers and listeners and readers are the best customers to feed them"

"Good news produce anxiety and the idea to have missed out, since if things are rosy how come I am doing so poorly? It is much more reassuring to hear of all the bad since "I am just above all that".

Marc, you need to make up your mind. Or dramatically improve your "semantics".

Peter, this is not hijacking the trend. From the very beginning (post 2) it was clear that the reasons why Bunnings or other big retailers choose a certain product range are dictated by marketing strategies of a global nature, not just by local shop choices. As I already said at post 77, though, we all know that this thread has nothing to do with woodwork specifically, it just stays here obviously because there is a wide audience and we are all touched by these issues in one way or another.