JB Hi-Fi Hit White Goods Market

JB hits home: JB Hi-Fi today announces the launch of JB HI-FI “Home” concept stores.
The ‘Home’ stores as previously tipped by Channel News, means JB is going hard on the growing white goods market taking on the likes of Harvey Norman, Winnings Appliances and The Good Guys, all strong players in the lucrative white goods market, as margin on traditional tech goods like TVs decline.

JB HI-FI’s Home concept stores will carry a full range of whitegoods, cooking and small appliances, as well as home entertainment categories. The Company will soon also launch a new dedicated e-commerce site for appliances.

Initially, the Home stores will be located at the its existing larger centres and said in a statement Home is a ‘logical extension’ to its current entertainment categories.

JB will conduct a “low risk” trial converting four existing homemaker centre stores in Queensland to Home stores and two more to follow in 2013.

These stores already exist in the Clive Anthonys format, thus will require minimal capital expenditure to convert.

If successful, rollout of JB HI-FI’s Home concept will hit ‘selected’ existing homemaker centres nationwide.

“We have a strong and successful JB Hi-Fi store model with a significant amount of growth ahead of us as we continue our store rollout program,” said JB Hi-Fi CEO, Terry Smart.

“We believe however that the strength of the JB Hi-Fi brand can be further leveraged to enable us to capture some of the circa $4 billion home appliances market.”

Smart also referred to existing supplier relationships, experience and skilled appliance sales staff gained through operating the Clive Anthonys stores for several years.

The localised trial will give it the ability to test the “Home” concept but to also ensure that it does not impact the strong customer engagement that exists with traditional JB Hi-Fi stores.

Smart also referred to the recent consolidation in the appliance market, which includes the winding down of Retravision stores and says it is “well positioned” to take advantage of.

“Our low cost of doing business enables us to deliver low prices and, with our strong focus on customer service, JB Hi-Fi is well positioned to take advantage of this opportunity and be successful in the home appliance market.”

Gfk research out this week, showed the small appliance market was one of the only growing categories in consumer tech Down Under.