CLICKS over bricks, more online bargains and less in-store sales.
The shopping revolution is here and it’s hitting the south-west hard.
Several decades ago, when tariffs were being lifted off importing foreign goods into Australian ports, the domestic manufacturing industry started its slow and painful decline into the oblivion.
We all thought the retail sector would be the post-modern job generator because Australia could import business shirts, tennis racquets and books from abroad but those same products had to be sold somewhere.
Retail replaced manufacturing as the main employer of semi-skilled and unskilled workers two decades ago and the Australian Bureau of Statistics has revealed the service industry’s share of the employment pie is somewhere near threequarters of the national workforce.
Here in the south-west, we have become more and more reliant on retail.
Although the figures are a little dated, the last ABS census in 2006 showed that one in six Warrnambool employees worked in shops. So the swing away from buying products in person to getting parcels via post is disconcerting.
Warrnambool City Council’s business sector report researchers told The Standard that employers who have some form of online presence were more confident than those who steered clear of the world wide web.
The report highlights the growing gap between employers impacted by internet sales and those that are largely immune.
South-west government services, education, transport and storage as well as business, professional and commercial services told researchers they would consider hiring more people. On the other hand, retail businesses were less than keen to attract more staff. This region’s geography makes online retail all the more desirable.
If suburban Melbourne and Sydney are moving to online sales in droves, where a shopping centre or major department store is only a hop, step and jump away, then surely people who live more than 20 minutes’ drive from the shops are going to be attracted to the online option.
Whereas once rural shoppers had to make do with catalogue shopping or semi-regular visits to Melbourne, the internet has opened up a plethora of shopping possibilities where someone in Hawkesdale or Allansford could buy products from New York’s Fifth Avenue or London’s Oxford Street.
Speaking of which, the British capital’s main shopping precinct has not rested on its laurels.
A website has been developed where shoppers from any corner of the globe can look online at Oxford Street’s shops and then decide which internet store they want to purchase goods from.
The internet site has harnessed the world-renowned name and transplanted it online, free from the constraints of geography and opening up business to millions more shoppers.
Business confidence has waned because many retail outlets are unsure how to tackle the online shopping dilemma.
Who could blame them? Running any respectable retail operation requires welltrained, professional staff whereas online shopping requires less employees.
Staffing costs are slashed then passed on to the consumer, making online goods more competitive.
The trend has compounded in recent years from only a small proportion of the population buying online to a regular, everyday household chore.
Regional post offices have noticed this trend more than most. I was speaking to an Australia Post official only recently about how online shopping has changed deliveries in the southwest.
His response: “If you go back five years ago, there’d be about a dozen packages to each rural post office a week.
“Now, there’s about 30 packages a day. We all thought the postal service was doomed because of the internet but strangely enough, the internet has saved Australia Post.”
When profit is at stake, principle flies out the window. We can beat the drum about the importance of preserving our retail sector in its current form and fight against market forces but it would inevitably be a losing battle. Just ask one of Australia’s most shrewd businessmen, Gerry Harvey.
The Harvey Norman chief transformed from an ardent opponent of online shopping, calling for the federal government to intervene to stop the internet menace, into a businessman who now is looking to set up an online outlet in China.
If you can’t beat ’em, join them.
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