Whirlpool

www.arnnet.com.au/index....42&eid=-4152

Why should this interest you? Give me a minute of your time...

Well, in 1994 Total Recall opened in North Sydney and was the only Apple reseller in the area. When Ben Bowley and then Tony King became Managing Director, Apple Australia decided to go for market share by expanding the number of resellers.

The market hadn't expanded, but suddenly Total Recall were one of 5 Apple Resellers, and one of 9 iPod resellers just in North Sydney. Total Recall went bust in December 2006 and since then each of the others has disappeared too.

That leaves Harris Technologies as the only Apple reseller in North Sydney, tucked away on the other side of the freeway where nobody goes. Oh, and this month they didn't even bother to put any Apple products in the catalogue.....

Way to go Apple! You really did a great job of expanding your market in North Sydney!

Cheers

Adam Connor
Former owner of Total Recall
www.bankruptedbyapple.com (under construction)

Having worked for a "value-added-reseller" long, long ago it was evident then that Apple does not like resellers - and that it is not an equal playing field despite what they say.

It always seemed to me resellers were destined to choose between two fates - go bust quickly, or bleed to death slowly, if the owners kept pumping money in from other more profitable sources.

Don't you just hate trying to make a living out of retail?

iLuxo - Yes I've realised since leaving the that business that Apple keeps you so focussed on making your numbers that you ignore everything else, including those things that would keep your business alive. Let's just say that the resellers goals and Apple's goals are not the same, and only overlap partially.......

Anyway, I still love the products (ooh they have some stinkers too) but I'm just calling their business practices into question.

Thanks for listening to my rant!

Adam

hehe... in my case the owner of the VAR also happened to be the owner of the largest DEC reseller, the sole distributor of a mainframe CAD software suite, and the owner of an engineering consultancy. A lot of the DEC buyers also wanted macs (architects are such fashion victims) so reluctantly we took that on to keep them happy but it was a loser the whole time. The consultancy was a cash-cow milked mercilessly to keep the rest alive...

If he'd stuck to growing the consultancy and got out of selling hardware the company would be alive today and he'd be a very rich man, but he loved his hardware too much...

umm....according to the link the CEO say they can offer cheaper price to customer online? I alway think shop front prices is same as their online price.

Also, I think the North Sydney shop was quite successful, alteast me and my manager has lot of 'impulse' buy from the shop which will not buy online.

too bad it is closing I like to shop there.

I never got to price comparison shop there, but they did do some stuff cheap. As far as Apple is concerned, there goes the last place in North Sydney you could buy a Mac. We didn't see them as competition, and they referred a lot of people to us for iPod repairs.

I think they did a pretty good job, and if they couldn't do it, what hope is there for others?

cheers

Adam

ps I'll try to make my next post positive, ah so much gloom!

agentofkaos writes...

there goes the last place in North Sydney you could buy a Mac

You can still go to the in-North-Sydney-by-name-only store, Computers Now.

iLuxo- yes I've just discovered that ignoring Apple and focusing on services is very profitable. That's the way I got into selling Macs before the reality distortion field kicked in.

I'm now selling when a customer requests stuff, and looking at it as an add on service. And I've sold lots of gear- we're not talking tens of thousands of $ here.......

Let's hope the company I now work for can be successful 17 years after I first discovered services.....

cheers

Adam

NIce Apple Store on the pacific highway in North Sydney/Crows Nest... CompNow. So their is still somewhere for us folks in N.Sydney to go.

And here I was thinking you were talking about Melbourne City Software!

BTW This thread should be in the Australia group, not the Mac group.

DiscoGuy- yes Comp Now do a good job, their recently upgraded store looks nice and they have some great people- but the store is not in North Sydney! We sometimes had people come into our shop looking for them and they were not happy to be told they needed to walk 20-25 minutes up hill to the shop!

DaveMark- sorry if I've posted in the wrong place, I thought this was most relevant to the Mac community, but I am not an expert on Whirlpool..... feel free to move it if you wish.

agentofkaos writes...

www.bankruptedbyapple.com (under construction)

Why is it redirecting to Google?

thanks for pointing that out, it's fixed now and wasn't a conspiracy!

I've even written a new post for you to digest.....

www.bankruptedbyapple.com

more on the way!

Ok, without me seeming negative - what is all this acheiving?

Are you expecting a pat on the back and a 'it will get better soon' - Obviously you've lost your business, but you're dredging it up here, you're only just creating a site - these things won't get your business back, not will they let you move on with your life.

I don't/can't comment on Apple's business practices, but it seems as though it was through your own fault that your business went kaput - you saw, as you say in your first post, no less than 4 new stores open to service the same market - of course this would hurt you financially; you should have realised this yourself.

All that said, I don't care if you have your little rant here - and I mean nothing offensive by this post, but I ask what does both your thread and your new website acheive - fight if you want to (with the ACCC etc) but as the majority of us aren't reaellers or people linked to Apple Retail - it seems as though you're only enlightening us to maybe get back at Apple, not to actually progress towards some sort of closure/resolution.

agentofkaos writes...

Why should this interest you? Give me a minute of your time...

I want my minute back!

Way to go Apple! You really did a great job of expanding your market in North Sydney!

I read recently that Apple were planning another smaller Apple-owned store at Chatswood. Given the push into retail giants like DSE, JB, Domayne, Myer etc they have reasonable coverage in places people shop, and get much better advertising coverage thanks to those chains. It's unfortunate for the small operator, but Australian retailing is increasingly being dominated by the largest players.

The fact that Dell are now offering product in OfficeWorks shows the competitiveness of the marketplace and the power the majors swing - remembering that OfficeWorks is part of Coles Group, and DSE is Woolworths. You have to offer something very different to survive in the face of that kind of competition.

It's understandable how you feel, but the giants have a take no prisoners attitude to retail competitors regardless of size. I think the small resellers were doomed regardless, and that you should be proud that you served the community well for as long as you did. Don't forget what you achieved, because you still have those and always will.

agentofkaos writes...

Apple Australia decided to go for market share by expanding the number of resellers.

So... you lost the business when you lost your exclusive status?

Sounds like bad business planning to me.

I have a feeling that you're gonna take this the wrong way...: Get some help, you're dwelling in the past. It's keeping you from moving forward and achieve new, great things.