E-Commerce Summit: Victoria’s strategy ‘exceptionally frustrating’, says Paul Zahra

Chief executive of retail peak body Paul Zahra says Premier Daniel Andrews’ strategy for businesses doesn’t make sense.

Australian Retailers Association chief Paul Zahra speaking to The Australian's 2020 E-Commerce Summit.

The Victorian government’s handling of successive lockdowns has been ’exceptionally frustrating’ according the chief executive of the Australian Retailers Assocation Paul Zahra, who has told The Australian’s E-Commerce Summit that Premier Daniel Andrews’ strategy ’doesn’t make sense’.

Speaking at E-Commerce Summit on Thursday, Mr Zahra, who was chief executive of department store David Jones between 2010 and 2014, said that aspects of the retail industry had been hard for the government to get its head around, and that the industry had suffered as a result.

As the newly minted boss of Australia‘s retail lobby group, it’s been Mr Zahra’s job throughout the pandemic to liaise with governments across Australia including in Victoria.

“I‘ve had to manage my frustration, I guess, because it doesn’t make sense, Mr Zahra said. ”What I had to present [to government] was one-on-one about the industry, and had they closed down online as well, people would have continued to shop but online offshore, which would have been a real plus for overseas, but not for local.

“When you‘re having to go through that sort of explanation with government officials, that’s very frustrating, but we’re very close to the date now and at least we’ve got a date. Let’s hope it may be brought forward. Let’s hope that we get it up and running as quickly as possible.”

Mr Zahra added that the retail industry, which is hoping for a Christmas boost amid the pandemic, faced a big test once government stimulus including JobSeeker and JobMaker come to an end.

The Australian's David Swan in converstaion with Evans SHoes' Richard Evans, the Australian Retailers Association's Paul Zahra and Vinomofo's Justin Dry.

“I guess you‘d have to believe that other parts of the federal government are going to have a positive impact, because part of that was bringing forward personal income tax cuts going back to the first of July,” the executive said. ”That’s significant for low and medium income earners. And what I do know is that low to medium income earners tend to spend the majority of the dollars that they spend whereas wealthy people save, so they’re not as great for the retail industry.

“The last round of stimulus by quarter was about worth about $60 billion into the country, and the federal budget changes are about $3 billion. So are we going to expect some change in consumer behaviour? You‘d have to think so, the unemployment rates are destined to decline. And I think you know, retailers have to trade through this Christmas period, give it their absolutely big shot, build up cash reserves, and then after that there’ll be an impact. Unless something fundamentally changes like a vaccine.”

The chief executive of e-commerce success story Vinomofo, Justin Dry, said that Melbourne was his company’s biggest market and his company had experienced a significant surge in demand throughout the pandemic as consumers increased their drinking habits.

Vinomofo CEO Justin Dry. Source: Supplied.

“The biggest shift we saw was just a whole bunch of new customers coming online. Whether those people hadn‘t tried us before, or hadn’t tried online before, there was a huge surge in new customer numbers,” he told the summit. ”It happened really, really quickly, and it was super hectic. We split shifts, we’ve doubled the team, we have two different managers that look after each individual team. It’s been a crazy period of time.”

He added that he‘d relied on e-commerce tools Domo, Hubspot and Jira to help meet demand.

The chief executive of footwear brand Evans Shoes, Richard Evans, is running a brand that is over 100 years old, weathering not just a pandemic but several world wars and financial crashes.

Mr Evans told the summit that his great grandfather started the business in the late 1800s, and that e-commerce is ‘here to stay’.

“If you don‘t embrace it, you will get left behind,” he said. ”We’ve built up a large amount of data profiles of people that do shop with us, and that’s been really beneficial. We used to run family trading accounts, and they were a form of that for many years, and that created instant brand loyalty.

“There are a lot of new valuable tools you really need to embrace. The minute we plugged into Shopify, things really took off for us.”

You can find more coverage of the 2020 E-Commerce Summit on The Australian’s dedicated page.