Retailing News

Despite Mr Rudds recent attempts to invoke the confidence to import and buy stock, followed by 3 success slaps in the face for small businesses by interest rate rises just when they expect to sell that stock, the ABS results (believe it or not) show Sales Growth For October.

In current price original terms, chains and other large retailers increased 6.6% in October 2009. The estimate for smaller retailers also increased 6.6% in October 2009.

Australia’s Retailers all know that sales increases wont be the case for November thanks to our inneffective Reserve Bank board, ( its only last year that those fools hiked interest rates sharply and then had to quickly reduce them).

The ABS chart above shows the trend series and seasonally adjusted series to October 2009.

In current price trend terms, Australian turnover increased 0.2% in October 2009 following increases of 0.3% in both September 2009 and August 2009. This is the smallest increase in Retail trend turnover since August 2008.

Food retailing, Department stores, and Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services have all had an increase in the trend for at least nine months. Clothing, footwear and personal accessory retailing decreased (-0.1%), the first decline since July 2008. Other retailing decreased (-0.1%) for the second consecutive month. Household good retailing remained unchanged in October 2009.

All states have had an increase in the trend estimate for at least four months except Queensland which decreased (-0.1%) in October 2009 and South Australia which remained unchanged for the second consecutive month.

In current price seasonally adjusted terms, Australian turnover increased by 0.3% in October 2009 following a decrease of 0.2% in September and an increase of 0.5% in August 2009.

Source for data: ABS.

Australia’s limp government are still allowing Paypal to hold massive consumer deposits in Australia without holding an Australian banking licence despite the fact that they are globally renowned for massive numbers of consumer and merchant complaints about the way they have handed customer’s money. (Just Google “paypal complaints” to see a few)
Frerk-Malte Feller the former head of eBay in Germany who has recently moved to Sydney to replace Dinuke Ranasinghe as the managing director of PayPal Australia hopes PayPal will sign up every single Australian merchant now selling anything online within the next couple of years.

It seems the friendly group of Australia’s licensed banking oligopoly are too much mesmerised by their ability to levy huge fees and now to increase loan spreads with the dud government’s blessing, to be bothered to compete with their unlicensed competitor.
Paypal claim that 27 per cent of online shoppers prefer to pay with PayPal, more than Visa or MasterCard or any other method.

Paypal says that they have five million active accounts in Australia and the company’s statutory financial statements for 2008 show PayPal Australia increased its customer deposit base by more than 50 per cent in 2008 to $92 million from $60 million in 2007.
Whilst Australia has so little competition between its banks now (because slimy politicians have allowed them to reduce to so few that they can all do better by not aggressively competing) the country needs more banks, but we don’t need the unlicensed kind that don’t have the government controls that provide public protection.
America has recently introduced the world to calamity caused by failure of unsupervised financial institutions not being required to meet prudential control limits. Let’s not have it here also.

Is our Government cutting existing projects whilst they skite about new projects?

After spending billions this year for little result, that future generation will have to repay, our Governments have started to talk a lot about spending money on infrastructure projects to create jobs. However it seems thay have no interest in protecting small business with existing committed infrastructure projects and are actually cutting them back.

A case in point is the the RTA’s new announcement that they have deleted the Ivy Lane exit from the Tintenbar to Ewingsdale Pacific Highway upgrade. This exit was to have been the major access to the famous Macadamia Castle from the Highway.

Under the new plan it would now be necessary for travellers from the North to exit 16 KM before the highway or backtrack 8km to visit the Castle. From the South visitors will have to exit at Ross Lane, travel 4km to the Castle and then continue on 13Km to rejoin the Highway. ( Yeah Right!)

This will have major detrimental effects on the Macadamia Castle and threatens its very existence. Macadamia Castle hopes to survive but may have to make drastic cuts to staff and infrastructure spending

The Macadamia Castle has become a landmark and well known place of interest to visit for people using the current highway.

As a major Retail business, Macadamia Castle at Knockrow is the area’s largest employer and a major purchaser of local goods. Each month over $200,000 is spent on local wages, produce and services. The business is 35 years old. The Castle is a major trainer of local youth in conjunction with TAFE. It provides a safe meeting place for Mums with young kids.

The Animal Park and is a destination for many school groups and holiday care programmes. It is a showcase for local products stocking over 200 local food items.  Its Café is a showcase for regional Cuisine.

Tony Gilding of the Macadamia Castle had the following to say about the RTA:-
“Despite the smooth words in the RTA documents :-
- The RTA has conducted no economic analysis of the impact on the Macadamia Castle.
- The RTA has made no predictions about the traffic flow that will result from these changes. In particular the issue of how residents and visitors from the North travelling to the  South of Byron such as Suffolk Park will exit the highway. The RTA’s suggestion that many of them will exit at Ewingsdale and travel through Byron Bay town would put pressure on already crowded Byron CBD.
- There is no compensation offered.
- There are vague indications of tourist routes and signage but no specifics.”

So how about spending the original planned infrastructure budget in this case where there is a clear and measurable impact and stop pretending its all new infrustructure spending.

Gifts and homewares retailers will be pleased to hear March and April retail sales growth statistics heading into to their first Gift and homewares trade fair of the coming Christmas/Summer season. The home and giving fair will be held 4th to 7th July at Sydney Olympic  Park, Homebush NSW and GHA exhibitors are cautiously optimistic of a reasonable result follwing a better than expected end to last season at the February 2009 Home & giving fair.

New South Wales leads the way with the highest increase in retail sales growth according to the latest ABS statistics. New South Wales grew by 1.3%,  with Queensland (+0.8%), Tasmania (+0.5%) and the Australian Capital Territory (+0.9%). Victoria was virtually unchanged, while South Australia (-0.1%), Western Australia (-2.4%) and the Northern Territory (-4.6%) all decreased in April 2009.
Australia wide, the Retail sales figures have again risen in April with a national increase of 0.3% following a 2.2% incease in March 2009.

Industries that had an increase in April 2009 (seasonally adjusted) were – Clothing and soft good retailing (+0.8%), Household good retailing (+3.9%) and Other retailing (+0.1%), while the Food retailing (-0.2%), Department stores (-2.8%) and Cafes, restaurants and takeaway food services (-0.5%) industries had a decrease.