mploy to remain competitive. “I am not in retailing per se but still read Inside Retail every day as there are always some gens and some market info to be gleaned. Your recent ‘open letter to all online retailers’ struck a chord. In this connected world it is no big deal to find out who else buys the same product as you, at a better, and in some cases a higher, price. In Australia we do not have the (horrible phrase) “critical mass” to use as a bargaining tool to import volume in multiple 40  high cube containers – as do the importers in Hong Kong and other trade centres where volume is so huge that margins are dramatically below ours in Australia. Our distribution costs across Australia are additional to the freight and on-costs expended to import the product into the country in the first place. Imagine what we pay to distribute in Australia compared to a local delivery cost in Hong Kong or Singapore. You need to price like for like! You need to be aware of the differences (and here I am stepping out from strictly “retail products” but there is some commonality). You need to consider specific cost centre overheads such as stocking costs. You have to be aware of lead times, when the ship is missed at the port of loading and then again at the port of trans-shipment leaving you weeks behind schedule and customer delivery expectations. So to compensate for that you have to increase stocks and that means additional holding costs – in our case, the same goes for spare parts. That is why in our business model we do not use distributors – only sell direct to the end user. That is the only way that we can keep our margins low enough to compete with the volume pricing of our much larger competitors, who sell both direct and via a multitude of distributors. who cut each other’s throats depending upon how badly they need sales / profit in any specific month. It’s a topic that could go on for days and it would make for a very interesting study based upon product type and import volumes.”  And another: “The reason why I found your comments so interesting, and vital, was that they could have such a profound impact upon the success, or otherwise, of SME’s in general. It is very difficult to find a common denominator applicable to all companies because there are so many variations on a theme but I think that your article did an excellent service in, hopefully, making all importers, not just retailers, look at what they do, how they do it, and what they can further do to find opportunities to improve their competitiveness. Someone may ask, ‘what has this got to do with online?’  It may not be directly linked but it is evidence of how some traders go about being and staying competitive, come what may,  as opposed to capitulating or worse still– whinging.”  Stuart Bennie is a retail consultant at Impact Retailing and can be contacted at stuart@impactretailing.com.au or 0414 631 702.