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Now here is the deal. Leave me to link 32 millions bugs.
We’re trying to expand the entire computer departments.
Every time we try to expand it the most senior proprietors
who are looking after electrical and furniture said you guys cannot take any more room.
Because fridges are much more important than computers
This computer division, you guys are just a joke this is just the fads.
So every time we wanna expand, we couldn’t expand, we actually land locked in the stores.
And the other challenge was is that we actually knew that the lucrative marketing computer was not the whole market
It’s just a small business market.
And at that stage if you wanna buy computer from Harvey Norman you got to go through the toasted departments.
Not the greatest environment I would be able it seems to buy the computer.
Then something happened, true story.
One of our suppliers rang a sub and he said Tony you got to go to the stores.
I said why? He said there is a new phenomena that is just hit the American retail scenes
I said what is it?
It’s called Super Stores.
Now we’re at this stage in Australia there’s no Super Store.
There were furniture stores, there were supermarkets, there were department stores
But this was a big box category killer retailer.
We jump in applying, we go to, where was it… we go to Los Angeles, we drive two hours south to go to Orange County.
We actually and this previous myself plus two other lead proprietors.
Ok and we start to visit this amazing stores, best buys, fries, staples, then we saw it
We saw heaven. It was called comp USA.
It was extraordinary, it was unbelievable. Now we now dressed in suits.
every time we walked into the stores, this is pre digital, we try to take photograph.
Every single instance in shoot.. we actually got chased out into dicapac.
This was just seriously just hit the market place.
There was the security guards everywhere just to observing what people are doing.
So we go back to our hotel room, because you know the definition of insanities.
Doing the same thing and expecting the different results.
So we said guys this is not working.
We go back and we dressed down.
You know what dress down is..jeans flannelette shirt.
And we said to the guys we can’t say we’re like from Sydney because Sydney is too confrontational.
So we actually do have a store and we do apologize for anybody who lives in this region
it just sounds not frightening this town.
We said we are from Dabau
We are from Harvey Norman Dabaw.. we’re Australian.
And I swear to God we actually went to first store and we got .. I think he was a thirty one year old store manager.
Fist thing we do is we go up to him.
And we just said we’re from Australia, we’re from the retail Harvey Norman, we got a store in Dabaw
We just wanna say this is an amazing store
You know this is a divine appointment because he loved this. I mean he loved us.
And then we said to him. Do you mind, do you mind if I ask you a couple questions
Now we kick all the others.
Do you mind and I guess there’s no problem come in to my office.. we were there for four hours.
Twenty seven pages of notes.
Then we said do you mind if we take your photos, and he said you don’t have to do that
I would get my people to do the photos for you.
And then we go back on the plane this is my success. You think I’ve done all of this, I do nothing
I go back to the Philda on Monday morning, called now sullivan.. I said now come at the office
Here is what I do, here’s the photograph then this...
At first store I’ve been in benets screening castle followed very rapidly by Harvey Norman at Olben
We upon up 32 superstores in the next year
In the next two years Harvey Norman in computers had 82 percents market share
of every personal computer bought in retail 82 percent was bought in Harvey Norman Outlets.
Here is the key. If you want to get somewhere really quickly.. hang around with people already there.
Success live seeds just go to follow the seeds. That’s a real story. That's the whole market can make it up.