There Is Nothing New About Amazon

There is a bit of Amazon in every trader at the Queen Vic Market but exposing that talent is a demanding task.

Games retailer, GameStop, has over 7,500 stores worldwide and this week it said it is reducing that number by 2 - 3% because more of its customers are downloading their computer games online rather than going into stores. "So what!" you might say. The significance is that this is just one more example, amongst the many thousands of examples, of technological innovation disrupting retail.

Retailing is changing at a rapid rate and one of the biggest changes is the predicted disappearance of cash as early as 2020. That is just a few years away. My first thought is for street beggars. Their supply of "spare cash" will dry up. But what about Queen Vic Market Traders who still only trade in cash?

We have a few dinosaurs amongst our Trader ranks. Those who refuse to engage with technology because we are a traditional market that doesn't need modern contraptions - try telling that to the majority of our customers.

A big fuss is being made about retail disruptor, Amazon, as if they are some mythical beast that we have never come across before. Retailers like Amazon have been around for centuries. Sears Roebuck disrupted retail back in the early 1900s when they combined catalog sales with bricks'n'mortar department stores - Gasp!

In 1979 our own Queen Victoria Market opened on Sundays, allowing customers to shop for the first time on a Sunday and introduced a whole new transition to on-demand shopping. Yes, QVM has been a retail disruptor.

Ali Baba allowed consumers to deal direct with large scale manufacturers rather than through a complex structure of importer, wholesaler, and retailer. It revolutionised consumer understanding and reset the concept of retail value. Damn them!

And let's stop calling "technology" the enemy here. We are simply watching innovation at play and innovation has been around since the dawn of mankind. Digital technology just happens to be the vehicle for much modern innovation in retail.

If you are one of those traders who wants to sit back and wait for management to bring back "your type of customer" you may want to rethink your strategy. Traders are the real entrepreneurs here and traders need to adapt to their customers wants and needs. Logic says it is never too late to join the party, but hopefully we can do that before your business and mine succumbs to the opposition in this retail revolution.

Bringing out the "Amazon" in each of us is a big task and, particularly because technology is involved, it will need collaboration. Management and traders have never needed each other so much.

By Greg Smith

Have Your Say - click here.

More Reading - Market Traders and Enlightenment, Walmart's CEO on Future Retailing.

Hundreds of links and articles come across our desk each week and many are included in some way on Victraders but some worthy ones miss out for various reasons. Here are some interesting articles that we can recommend for more reading -

A revealing interview with Walmart’s CEO –

https://hbr.org/2017/03/we-need-people-to-lean-into-the-future

Fancy a philosophical discussion on the connection between market traders and human enlightenment? This article by ABC’s Stan Grant may interest some.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-24/why-the-sydney-markets-carry-on-the-spirit-of-the-enlightenment/8384794

Have Your Say - click here.

The World Loves Melbourne And The Queen Vic Market

A great visual tour of our market can be found here - https://theworldlovesmelbourne.com/food-wine/1513-tour-of-queen-victoria-market.html

Latest Retail News – 26/3/2017

1. Ex CEO, CFO, and directors face court over collapse of Dick Smith.
2. Premier Investments reports strong first half and expansion plans for Smiggle to over 320 stores globally by end 2017.
3. Uniqlo looks to boost design-to-shelf production times.
4. Dan Murpyh’s accounts for nearly 30% of total Australian alcohol sales.
5. Kathmandu profit up despite closure of 3 UK stores.
6. Red Rooster rolls out new “urban” shopfront concept.
7. Rag & Bone opens its first Australian apparel store in Strand Arcade.
8. Online player, Catch Group, acquires Pumpkin Patch name.

Some Retail Comedy

Retail News - Kmart, Target, Amazon

Analyst Recommends Sale Of Kmart

Credit Suisse has recommended that parent company Wesfarmers should sell off the successful Kmart to enable it to concentrate on the struggling Target chain.

Apparently they feel that would give Target new freedom to adopt some of Kmart’s pricing strategies. Kmart is considered at the top of its profit earning capacity.

The analyst also questioned Target’s ability to compete with the super flexible design/supply chains of its competitors.

Amazon’s Success In Clothing

Disbelievers of the potential for online clothing sales should be interested in the latest statistic out of the US. One analyst has predicted that Amazon’s clothing and accessories sales will rise by 30% in 2017 to $28billion while Macy’s will drop 4% to $22billion making Amazon the largest clothing retailer in the US.

Britain’s Largest Clothing Retailer Admits To Mistakes

Next is the UK’s largest clothing retailer and it blames its first profit drop in 8 years to a loss of focus.

Like many clothing retailers, Next faces strong competition from the likes of Zara and H&M particularly through their ability for incredibly fast design turnaround. Their time from original design to stock in stores is measured in weeks.  Next made great efforts to bridge that gap but now realise it was at the expense of their core clothing products that had been the feature of many of their ranges.

Next said they were “extremely cautious” about the outlook for the year ahead, identifying three key threats: shoppers spending less on clothes and more on eating out and holidays; price rises as a result of the drop in sterling; and weaker growth in consumers’ incomes. 

Heard Under The Sheds -26/3/2017

PODS Are Coming – we haven’t seen any drawings yet, although some traders have, and they say the new PODS look like a good way of displaying stock in a more professional manner. We don’t even know how many PODS are coming – maybe one or two as a trial. Watch this space.

Rent Payments – initial consternation that we would no longer be able to pay rent in cash have been replaced by requests for alternative methods of payment. QVM have not exactly promoted the alternatives except for Direct Debit which is not too palatable for many traders.

We need to know the QVM bank account details if we are going to arrange funds transfer when we do our banking. And what about a facility to pay at any Post Office? -  that would require QVM setting up an APO barcode on their invoices.

We understand that cheques can still be placed in an envelope with trader details and handed in at the market office. Just don’t expect a receipt on the spot.

New Back Of House Support – We have heard that the highly respected customer relationship management program, Salesforce, is coming to QVM. Salesforce manages a whole range of communication and data activities to make it easier for customers (traders) to get the information they need and to manage functions in a timely manner. No doubt rental payments will be part of that process including immediate access to individual trader accounts and invoices.

Cochlear, Optus, Telstra, L’Oreal, Allianz, and Pizza Hut are all users of Salesforce in Australia.

New Trader Rep for D Shed? – we came across an intense discussion in D Shed this week as one trader tried to convince another to nominate for a vacant position  on the Trader Representative Committee. The potential nominee (let’s call him Joe) said that he couldn’t guarantee that he would always act in a calm manner in committee. Joe’s middle name is “passion” and we can only hope that he does in fact nominate. Every committee needs rich diversity.

Some Traders See Opportunity In String Bean Alley – you might have noticed a couple of traders setting up shop in L Shed with a back door (or front door, depending on how you look at it) into String Bean Alley. Taking advantage of both exposures makes a lot of sense and perhaps should have been embraced by all L Shed traders from the start.

Departing Stallholders – the number of traders leaving our market is on the rise and it should come as no surprise that some have been from the well populated Ladies Fashion category. A couple of traders have commented that the category’s decline is easy to understand with intense outside competition and  too many traders buying stock from the same suppliers.

Have Your Say - click here.

It Is Now OK To Say Retail Apocalypse

The shackles have been broken. There is no longer an elephant in the room. The current global retail condition has been described as an apocalypse (universal or widespread destruction or disaster) in a number of news articles over the last week.

Let’s take a look at that. This a graph showing the number of US store closures in early 2017.

A History Of Retailing

It is interesting to look at a history of US retailing and let’s make the point up front that cataclysmic change, like we are currently experiencing, terminates many retailers.

In the early 1900’s catalogs were the go. You could buy almost anything from mail order catalogs – beds, plates, pianos, food, shotguns, hats, and feathers. Sears Roebuck came up with the wonderful idea of combining catalogs with bricks’n’mortar stores. They provided assortment, value and service and prospered. Instant gratification was the carrot with nearby stores and a newly established railway system exciting customers. Sears Roebuck became one of the world’s dominant retailers, but how times change. In recent weeks Sears have announced a $2billion loss over the last 12 months and in their words, there is “substantial doubt” for their future.

Amazon’s online catalog is eerily similar to Sears in at least one respect – they have just about everything. They have raised the bar on assortment, value and service, but this time the emphasis is on e-commerce providing a large part of the convenience factor. You don’t have to go to a store.

Walmart’s CEO Doug McMillon recently said –

Our goal is to be able to serve our future customers. To do that, we need to build a strong and capable e-commerce business—but also to strengthen what we’re doing in stores. Customers want to save money and time and have the broadest assortment of items, and we think that by bringing e-commerce and digital capabilities together with the stores, we can do things that a pure e-commerce player can’t.

So what does this mean for retail markets like QVM? We are not immune from the new e-commerce connection. Traders love saying that we are not a shopping centre and new technology has never been part of a traditional market, but isn’t that just another excuse for doing nothing? The evidence is out there.

QVM has started the ball rolling with more engaging social media and it is doing something about the convenience of way finding. The QVM website needs to be more dynamic and more trader-related, and we need better data collection facilities on simple things like customer counts.

But this is a shared responsibility and a lot needs to come from traders. The personal interface between trader and customer is paramount and these days that interface includes e-commerce. You cannot escape it. You cannot sidestep it.  It is what customers expect.

Add in a huge amount of competition from a whole range of sources and Traders must find better ways of being relevant to modern consumers or become one of the retailers that fell by the wayside during the retail apocalypse of 2017.

Have Your Say - click here.

Call For Historic Photos of The Market

Do you have any old photos of the market, particularly your business at the market?

A Queen Vic Market Heritage Forum is being conducted at the end of March and organisers would love your old photos. Send them to Angela Shen or simply contact Angela at angela.shen@qvm.com.au

We published details of the forum a little while back but here they are again –

The Queen Victoria Market site has a long and important history.

You’re invited to join a conversation about how we can preserve and acknowledge this history as we prepare to renew the market.

The first community forum as part of the Queen Victoria Market Precinct Renewal Program will be held on 29 March 2017.

We will provide an overview of some of the heritage values of the site, the planning and strategies we have in place to preserve the market’s history and encourage you to share your ideas and proposals for activities to promote the history of the site during and beyond the renewal program.

Panellists will include heritage consultant and architect Peter Lovell, research fellow in digital ethnography at RMIT, Shanti Sumartojo and Karl Boening from American Donut Kitchen, a market institution since the 1950’s. This will be followed by a workshop to explore ideas and suggestions on preserving and celebrating the market’s heritage.

When:             5.15pm for 5.30pm start to 7.30 pm, Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Where:            Blue Room, Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne (directly opposite the market)

RSVP:             By Monday 27 March to qvmrenewal@melbourne.vic.gov.au or call 9658 9658

The Good News In Retail This Week

Has anyone got some good news? ....... Anyone?

Have Your Say - click here.

QVM In The News - 23/3/2017

NEWS

        Doyle Running Out Of Options in market chess game.

        CBD News

        The merits of the Queen Victoria Market (QVM) renewal have sunk to the bottom of a political swamp   dominated by misinformation and brinksmanship.

NEWS
	Melb City Councillor Michael Caiafa stands down following vote recount Herald Sun QUEEN Victoria Market trader Michael Caiafa who was elected to Melbourne City Council last October has formally stood down after last week's vote ...

NEWS
	Queen Victoria Market redevelopment: the best Melbourne has seen for 25 years Domain News Melbourne City Council is proposing a $250 million overhaul of the market, including relocating heritage-listed fruit and vegetable stalls and building ...

NEWS
	Melbourne Fashion Festival 2017: International designers take over Queen Victoria Market for a night The Sydney Morning Herald Thankfully on Wednesday night, a group of international design graduates left the smallgoods in the fridges at Queen Victoria Market's renowned deli ... Have Your Say - click here.

More Reading - $500m Renewal, Baltimore Markets, Discounting Turnoff

Hundreds of links and articles come across our desk each week and many are included in some way on Victraders but some worthy ones miss out for various reasons. Here are some interesting articles that we can recommend for more reading -

Major Renovations at Suburban Shopping Centre – The Glen.

https://www.insideretail.com.au/blog/2017/03/16/major-regional-shopping-centre-to-undergo-490-million-facelift/

City Markets Strive To Remain Relevant In Baltimore.

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/baltimore-diner-blog/bs-fo-markets-overview-20170221-story.html

Too Much Discounting Can Be A Turn-off

http://www.smartcompany.com.au/marketing/theres-thing-much-discounting/

Have Your Say - click here

More Poster Bombing

Overhead screens have been installed in the Meat and Fish Hall and at present they are showing some of the excellent photographs of traders that can be found posted around our city.
The latest location provided an opportunity for some more poster bombing. This photo features Iris.

Have Your Say - click here.

COMMENTS:
19/03/2017 20:03:49 More poster bombing "Wow! That's me! LOL" Iris

Latest Retail News – 19/3/2017

Latest Retail News – 19/3/2017
1. Menswear retailer, Wolf Kanat, bucks trend and opens new retail store in Sydney’s Mid City Centre.
2. Embattled US department store, Sears, posts $2b (yes billion) loss.
3. New deal gives Woolworths access to European private label goods.
4. Luxury Italian brand, Furla, achieves strong growth.
5. Bunnings UK opens online store.
6. German hypermarket, Kaufland, announces plans for Australia.
7. High-end US department store, Neiman Marcus, up for sale.
8. Topshop launches its Australian online store.
9. Australia Post tests new 3 wheel electric delivery vehicles in Hobart as parcel volumes rise.
10. Myer says sales in January and February “below expectations”.
11. French Connection makes loss for fifth consecutive year.
12. Eco-friendly products push cosmetics industry to new heights.

Traders St Patrick's Day Message From Disneyland

Kris Robinson is a market trader and an Irishman through and through. He is currently on leave in the US with his family but was keen to share St. Patrick's Day wishes with all his friends at QVM and sent us this video.

Isn't that a Leprechaun carrying Kris?

Have Your Say - click here.

Saved By Adele?

Predicting or even commenting on sales trends is a rocky road that we usually avoid at Victraders but this week is different.

Over the past week a couple of our "more considered" traders have been ready to call a significant economic downturn. Traders often feel they are a litmus test for consumer buying - we know about consumer sentiment at least a couple of weeks before the news hits the press.

So what is the evidence? February and March sales seem to be at historic lows. Sunday sales in particular have crashed. There is plenty of bad news out there about house prices, mortgages, and interest rates. Normal "saviours" in the form of city wide events, or celebrity concerts don't seem to have worked this time around. Bruce Springsteen's recent sold out Melbourne concerts hardly seemed to raise a ripple and Guns'n'Roses filled the MCG but hardly created paradise city.

This weekend Adele is filling Etihad Stadium with two concerts and her fans are certainly evident in the market. This story is being written early Sunday morning and for most traders, after two dismal weekends of trading, Saturday's sales showed a return to form. Will that continue and will Adele's fans make recent sales performance seem just like water under the bridge? Let's hope so.

Have Your Say - click here.

How Should Greenhouse Be Utilised

QVM will appoint an operator to run the top floor, the Greenhouse level, of the new market pavilion in Queen St. 

If you can imagine a level of greenery, perhaps something like a farm in the sky, you may be able to offer some ideas for the area's utilisation.

A discussion will be held in the Multicultural Hub at 506 Elizabeth St. (NOT the Engagement Hub on Queen St.) on Tuesday 21st March at 3pm to consider options. Traders are invited to RSVP direct to cathy.nilbett@qvm.com.au if they wish to participate.

A First For Andy

One of the joys of working at QVM is the unpredictability. You are never quite sure what your next customer request is going to be.

Andy has been trading in our market for a long time but this week he performed a service that he had never been asked to do before. He engraved a message on a wheelchair. 

Engravings are usually done on smaller items, often jewellery, and a wheelchair presented a unique challenge. When you think about it, a personally engraved message has many applications - maybe Andy needs to get ready for bikes or even a car to be presented at his stall.

Have Your Say - click here.

Getting The Right Perspective on Munro's/QVM Site

Yesterday's Herald Sun includes an article by Shaun Carney, an Adjunct Associate Professor in Politics at Monash University in which he expresses some views on the Munro site development.

Shaun Carney makes a mistake that many observers are making. The Munro development is not the Queen Vic Market. It happens to be adjacent to the market (and therefore has relevance) but essentially Munro's is adding a more appropriate surrounding to our market than currently exists. 

The proposed red brick construction of the podium, the lane ways, and the retail content are all more appropriate for that site. There are probably not too many people who are in love with high rise towers but they are a prerequisite for managing business and populations in CBD's, and this one, set in the back corner of a fairly large block, is probably as inconspicuous as any tower can be even allowing for the requested additional height. The CoM makes a good point when it says that a 100 metre monolith across the whole site would be far more unattractive than the proposed single corner tower.

The Queen Vic Market is low height, and as far as we know, will stay that way. While we pontificate on applying the same rules to a surrounding CBD we jeopardise fixing the "tatty" aspects of our market. Mr. Carney quite rightly calls our market "treasured", but the treasure is declining and needs our attention.

The Munro site has relevance for QVM in at least two key ways. Firstly, it is adjacent to us and needs to be an appropriate neighbour for a retail market. The red brick construction, the lane ways, and the purpose (accommodation, entertainment, retail, community services) are all relevant. Secondly, it is owned by the city and presumably inextricably connected with financing the market renewal itself.

There is a discussion going on in Baltimore at the moment about four public markets that are in need of renewal. Market renewals all around the world have their difference but there seem to be one standout aspect in US renewals and that is the American understanding of community responsibility. When renewals have business financing and community financing, all parties seem to take responsibility for making sure the figures stack up. Here we seem to say - "fix the problem but don't change these things, and by the way, financing is your problem." No wonder international market guru, David O'Neil, puts so much emphasis on community.

It is true that opponents to renewal have alternative options that include weather proofing, a platform car park over the current asphalt, and renewable energy (although that already exists).

As far as we can tell, the proposed QVM renewal won't change the market's historical appearance much at all. Whatever happens, financing will be needed. The eventual sale of the Franklin St triangle and the profit the city makes from Munro's will help provide that financing.

And while we are talking financing let's take a look at the QVM spend. Up to $250m is to be spent on the renewal. "Up to" is a key term, and $79m has already been spent on Munro's. There isn't a lot left. This week it was announced that $500m was to be spent renewing The Glen Shopping Centre out at suburban Glen Waverley. That might give some perspective to our own renewal. (Incidentally the plans at The Glen include an upgraded "Fresh food market hall", just in case we need to be reminded of our competitors addressing the need for change.)

Mr Carney admits that there are some obvious shortcomings that need correcting at QVM. He needs to talk to some of our struggling traders, and those who have recently left the market, to understand that actions of the past are unlikely to protect the future of traders at QVM. As measured as his article is, it smacks of leaving things as they are, and that is not the best option for QVM.

So, do we listen to those who want to leave things, or at best play around with the edges of our market, or do we accept the vision of city designers who have made Melbourne the world’s most liveable city. Every trader needs to make up their mind about that - and of course so does the State Planning Minister as he decides on the approval process.

By Greg Smith

Have Your Say - click here.

COMMENTS:
15/03/2017 19:42:40 accept the vision of city designers "If we leave things as they are its inevitable, the slow decline over the past 15 or so years will continue.
Lets embrace the change, and  be able to compete with the rest of the world." Andy
Thanks for your input Andy - Ed

20/03/2017 09:38:51 MUNRO SITE "It  doesnt matter how you ""dress up"" the surrounding
area of the MARKET....the real problem is the MARKET itself.
Who do we have in management to answer the REAL problems such as EMPTY SHEDS
& POOR STANDARD of Merchandise by CASUAL and LONG TIME stallholders?"
The surrounds to our market do matter but you are correct about the internal things that need fixing. Wouldn't it be great just to click our fingers and have it all done at once. Thanks for your input - Ed

QVM In The News - 14/3/2015

NEWS
	Queen Victoria Market's human aspect must be included in any refurbishment Herald Sun ON Sunday morning, I did what I do most weekends and headed off to the Queen Victoria Market for my weekly shop. As always, it was a seamless ...

NEWS
	Queen Vic Market: Lord Mayor warns of decline unless $250m redevelopment approved Herald Sun THE Queen Victoria Market will keep declining unless a $250 million ... “There is no reason why Queen Victoria Market, following this renewal project, ...

Heritage And The Queen Victoria Market

Many trader’s thinking goes beyond day to day income and extends into wider views of our market. Examining and understanding the history of  QVM, the role it plays in the lives of market families, past and present, and the role it plays in the very fabric of Melbourne’s community are all aspects that help define what we are.

If you are one of those traders who thinks a bit more deeply about QVM, you may be interested in a formal conversation about how we preserve and acknowledge the market. There have been discussions in the past about the possibility of a market museum which would include things like wonderful historic photos and perhaps one of our original storage boxes. You may prefer to concentrate on what David O’Neil calls the “human ecology” -  the way traders and families interact with each other, their customers and the operators of the market.

A conversation is to be held on the evening of Wednesday 29^th March with panellists including heritage consultant and architect Peter Lovell, research fellow in digital ethnography at RMIT, Shanti Sumartojo and our own Karl Boening from American Donut Kitchen. Details are below.

Let’s make sure that the this isn’t just an academic discussion but includes the views of a variety of traders who live and work at the market every day.

The Queen Victoria Market site has a long and important history.

You’re invited to join a conversation about how we can preserve and acknowledge this history as we prepare to renew the market.

The first community forum as part of the Queen Victoria Market Precinct Renewal Program will be held on 29 March 2017.

We will provide an overview of some of the heritage values of the site, the planning and strategies we have in place to preserve the market’s history and encourage you to share your ideas and proposals for activities to promote the history of the site during and beyond the renewal program.

Panellists will include heritage consultant and architect Peter Lovell, research fellow in digital ethnography at RMIT, Shanti Sumartojo and Karl Boening from American Donut Kitchen, a market institution since the 1950’s. This will be followed by a workshop to explore ideas and suggestions on preserving and celebrating the market’s heritage.

When:             5.15pm for 5.30pm start to 7.30 pm, Wednesday, 29 March 2017

Where:            Blue Room, Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth Street, Melbourne (directly opposite the market)

RSVP:             By Monday 27 March to qvmrenewal@melbourne.vic.gov.au or call 9658 9658