The retailer behind Rebel, Supercheap Auto and BCF wants fanatics, not just customers
The boss of the retail group that owns chains including Rebel, Supercheap Auto and BCF warns that retailers who fail to generate intense brand loyalty face extinction.
Business
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The boss of the retail group that owns chains including Rebel, Supercheap Auto and BCF says simply attracting customers to your business is no longer a guarantee of success.
Instead, Super Retail Group chief Anthony Heraghty wants “fanatics” and he warns retailers that fail to generate intense brand loyalty face extinction as technology, changing consumer habits and mounting international competition transform the industry.
“We are going from a business model that has been pretty much unchanged for two millennia to one that is going through significant change, it’s going from analog to digital,” Mr Heraghty told Business Daily.
“Those traditional levers of great product, great price, convenient location, lots of car parks, shop in airconditioned comfort — all those mantras that we grew up with are no longer meaningful levers to pull with consumers who have such radically different expectations.
“If you are just a general merchant who doesn’t have anything other than this you are going to get eaten up by online competition.”
Super Retail owns a suite of brands that have carved out market-leading positions in specialty areas.
Rebel is the nation’s largest sporting goods retailer, Supercheap Auto is the number one player in the aftermarket auto parts sector, while the BCF (Boating Camping and Fishing) brand is the number one retailer in camping and outdoor leisure.
The group also owns Macpac — it shelled out $135 million for the New Zealand-based label in 2018 — and aims to build it into the number one destination for outdoor adventure wear and accessories.
In a year that saw a string of household retail names collapse — Harris Scarfe, Dimmeys, Bardot and Ed Harry among them — Super Retail lifted net profit by close to 9 per cent to $139.3 million.
Shares in the Brisbane-based company have surged more than 40 per cent, comfortably outperforming a 20 per cent rise on the broader stock market.
Mr Heraghty noted that while consumers remain “volatile” — relaxing the purse strings on good economic news but pulling them tight when the data turns negative — retailers are facing a far bigger challenge than simply navigating through a low point in the economic cycle.
“It’s not so much a consumer issue per se,” Mr Heraghty said when asked about the failure of high profile retail chains.
“It’s just that the market and industry is going through such radical, transformative change.”
Mr Heraghty joined Super Retail in 2015 having previously worked as group manager of underwear for Pacific Brands, and as the global marketing director for Fosters.
A key focus has been on continuing to simplify the business. It has folded the Amart Sports brand into Rebel and converted Rays Outdoor outlets to Macpac.
In 2020, making more sophisticated use of the group’s loyalty program to create “fanatics” is high on the to do list. Bulk emails with the latest specials were not going to cut it, Mr Heraghty said.
Instead the group is trialling initiatives such as sending a carton of BCF branded beer to its 100 biggest spending customers.
In Supercheap Auto, the retailer used the Bathurst 1000 to invite its 15 largest spending customers at the race to visit the winner’s podium.
“They weren’t corporate flunkies or suppliers but real customers who support our business and we were able to give them a once in a lifetime experience,” Mr Heraghty said. “I would say that process is turning a customer into a fanatic. If you were that customer would you shop anywhere else? The question is then how do we industrialise initiatives like those?”
With Rebel, while athleisure has been a fashion trend of the past decade, prompting the arrival of UK heavyweight JD Sports, Mr Heraghty said he is not interested in that part of the market.
“We want to dial really hard into the sweat. If you want to play sport in Australia, Rebel is the place to come to. If you want to buy a cool pair of sneaker to wear to the pub then we might not be your first choice and that is OK,” he said.
Mr Heraghty got his first look at retail via his father, who ran a small earth moving business before becoming a John Deere dealer.
His first external gig was working as a Christmas casual in the Myer book department at its Logan store near Brisbane. A lot has changed in retail since then.
But despite the challenges, Mr Heraghty remains enthused about the sector.
“This is an old industry, it has been around for a long time and it is going through the biggest challenge in a generation,” he said.
“To be in the middle of that is really exciting because where there is change there are opportunities. If you hang on to the way of the old or become overly fixated on just the new you really can come off the bike in a big way.”