This video is part one of my 3-part “Bunnings Dossier” series! The story was way too big for just one video, so this first one just covers the rise (and wrath) of Bunnings as a business. Next up is the story of Masters Home Improvement, a story I’m sure you’re all familiar with, and then after that will be about the culture of Bunnings. Super excited for all of this, if you’re new around here subscribe!
@@Dorainn I think Mitre 10 needs a mention, such as it taking on Bunnings and failing (except in NZ), being demutualised in 2012 (possibly as a result), splitting from Mitre 10 NZ, buying Danks, and creeping over Danks brands and some independent ones like Porters and Dahlsens.
It will be interesting to see your take on Masters. I worked with corporate at Masters so was privy to much of the inside shenanigans. To give you a little heads up at the end it was all about the real estate which had appreciated significantly and which Woolies owned exclusively. Lowes ran the business side effectively operating the stores hence the Masters 'blue'. Many stores ran at a loss but it could have been saved but unfortunately Woolies pulled the rug out from under Lowes and set them adrift. Sad really! There's much more to it than this brief discourse. Let's see what you can dig up
@@originalsusser Interesting that you worked with Masters' corporate! I have the script written and I must say that I don't discuss the aftermath of the Woolworths-Lowes JV too much because I wanted the video to be more about Masters' failings at a consumer level, but you're right, there's so much more to it than people realise. Make sure to leave a comment with your thoughts after the video releases, I'd love to read them!
I'm really hoping you get into the Masters saga -- apart from the pure business side there was a ridiculous amount of "hearts and minds" where Australians were championing its failure because they love Bunnings. Basically we killed the competition that might have saved us.
If you're interested in diving deeper into the Bunnings strangulation of its suppliers, find the book "The Walmart Effect". I bet there's a copy on every Westfarmers bedside table.
The beat it by 10% rule is also sort of a lie in that a lot of Bunnings' products are different brands & packages to what other shops offer, and quite often they'll use different quantities so you can't directly compare them (packet of 12 bolts instead of 10, etc). (Source: used to work at a Mitre 10. Guess what business is in the building now.)
Second this. My Husband works for Bowens in the hardware department and would regularly tell me how Bunnings is a rip off and done everything to get a monopoly on the most common brands people could buy (especially power tools) so you practically only have one place to get them from with no price competition. Good for Bunnings, bad for customers who cannot shop around
@@GalileoFigar0Same as Officeworks.Same printer with different colour and therefore a different number = not the same = no 10% discount. Also it seems you can’t get Ryobi anywhere else than Bunnings.
Great video the only thing I think you missed was The Rise and the fall of masters home improvement which obviously was supposed to be the big competition from the Woolworths side
All this money and the bunnings I work at still functions on the most BARE MINIMUM amount of staff that they possibly could, leaving the rest of us overworked and severely demotivated
Not at any store I have been to. There's plenty of time for a chat amongst the staff but if you ask it's all 'I don't know, I just started here.' Not all staff flob you off but a lot do, especially the younger ones who know Bunnings is one step up from Maccas.
I love the dig at Masters at the end, and what a massive flop it was. I also think its worth mentioning the bunnings snags, its such an iconic thing that cemented it as a proper aussie brand for many people.
Yeah for sure, this is part one of a series of videos I’m doing about Bunnings, Masters is the next episode then “Bunnings culture” as I’m calling it is third
Wesfarmers already had the good and well trained staff. Woolworths scooped up badly trained "junkies". To blame it on Lowe's failure to recognise seasons was weak.
@@LawpickingLocksmith Woolworths had nothing to do with the employment of staff at Masters. Just like Bunnings have always done Masters employed ppl with various retail experience who showed aptitude or knowledge for hardware, and believe me there are plenty of contenders out there, instore training only involved OHS, store practice and supplier product training not hardware sales training. Your summation is as contorted as your handle
@@originalsusser Some people just don't see it: Personally I prefer Coles as staff is actually trained to help. WW staff just block the aisles when restocking. Same when Masters opened, sure they had tradies but ever noticed how Bunnings has that person of first impression greeting you something that goes a long way for customer satisfaction. Also the many women there are trained to handle rough tradies. Masters had the idea of serving feminists on their white painted floors. A fresh idea to no avail.
One of the other reasons bunnings does so well is we do not have much choice in rural areas, so the one or two hardware stores in small cities have pretty healthy markups. As soon as a Bunnings gets built, their buying power and prices puts the others out of business forcing them to have monopoly then on that location.
You are foolish to think this is a good company. Their mandate is to put out of business every other business. They have the power to cripple suppliers that don’t bow down to them. Their margins are getting fatter and fatter as they send another supplier broke and get the goods copied over in china. The quality is spiralling down. You think you getting it cheaper but you are not. You are just buying inferior product. They also employ 1 to 5 of a small business. It is just another monopoly business wrecking our economy.
Monopolies jack up captured customers once formed so yeah it is bad. Coles and woolies recent price hikes? Or uber, before it decimated the taxi industry was significantly cheaper - now its basically the same price as taxis but the workers are underpaid and have no workplace rights. So yeh monopolies are bad.
Monopolies jack up captured customers once formed so yeah it is bad. Coles and woolies recent price hikes? Or uber, before it decimated the taxi industry was significantly cheaper - now its basically the same price as taxis but the workers are underpaid and have no workplace rights. So yeh monopolies are bad.
3:56 Not quite an outright buyout but in a centre in Adelaide a similar thing happened -kmart moved out due to low sales -bigw took over the space. -coles didn't like being next door to bigw so they gave up their lease. -woolworths is taking over the Coles space. -coles put a Liquorland next to what will be Woolies just so W can't put a bws there At the same time Coles has a centre with 2 Coles within 100m of each other so it's unlike Coles to give up a space
They opened a shop in peppermint grove wa, 1 of the most expensive areas in Australia 5 years later when all the remaining small hardware shops had closed down they closed the branch down and turned it into a Woolworths shop. Now everyone travels further and competition is none.
The fact that Woolworths Limited working in concert with Bunnings’ closest US equivalent, Lowe’s*, resourced with a seemingly bottomless pot of cash and a leisurely ten years before any expectation of profitability, couldn’t put a dent in Bunnings’ stranglehold over the market really shows just how powerful a category killer they are.
Wow, Being born in 1994 I recall the other Bunnings competitors all going under. But I didn't realise that they were completely unknown outside of WA and were primarily just a timber wholesaler until the 1990s. That's shockingly recent.
5:25 Technically they kept BBC Hardware as Bunnings Trade. *Edit - they didn’t collapse apparently 6:18 They also bought a few others, such as some Dahlsens stores when it offloaded its consumer operations to Mitre 10 around 2012, and certain Masters stores when they couldn't be leased to HomeCo and aren't too close to a Bunnings (sometimes resulting in Woolworths Marketplaces with Bunnings in them). 6:25 Woolworths actually was going to take over Mitre 10 but it was deemed to complex, so they took over Home instead. They would later sell Home to Mitre 10 after appointing sale managers to Masters. Mitre 10 would meanwhile have divorced its NZ master franchisee and be demutualised and sold to IGA master franchisee Metcash, who would in turn sell its automotive business to Burson. (Maybe Mitre 10 was also short on cash?)
Mitre 10 is still owner by Metcash. Metcash also owns Total Tools. I know because I buy stone stuff for our independent trade center from the Danks warehouse. Which is Metcash/Mitre 10
They still employ burger flippers - encountered no knowledge staff in the Tool Shop, Flooring & Tile from my recent experience. Review a product and if it's negative they don't allow the posting. Recent issue with grout and staff shrugged their shoulders, approached the supplier (Dunlop) and they did the same. Also have an issue with the small items they hang at the end of an isle - if it's a high traffic path you should be able to see anyone approaching like a road intersection but they stack em high & when you bump into others the corner stuff hanging gets knocked off. Small gripes but as a frequent visitor you see the short comings - they have 3 levels of store size that I have seen. Springvale is an A store, Nottinghill formerly Homehardware is a B & Chadstone is a C or as I call it 'the fluffy store' but it's walking distance so I start with there.
Yeah, the different store sizes are weird. I assumed that the massive stores - the ones that all look largely the same - would be called "Bunnings Warehouse" and everything else just "Bunnings", but that doesn't seem to be the case. There's some Bunning Warehouses that are built into shopping centres!
@@aussie8114 Liquid bottles with color match - Buff was pictured on bottle but when applied it was nothing like it so instead of a repair I would have to regrout whole job. Dunlop said they'd look into it & sent a rep to take my bottle away for testing. 2wks & still no news so rang and said can you replace it - need to get repair done. They give me a new bottle but color is still wrong, so I had to do the whole shower but now it doesn't match the bath tiles so had to grout that as well.
I find it amazing that all these retail stores like Mitre10 and Home hardware, even stores like Repco, and Auto pro, they all watched as Bunnings and Supacheap started to dominate their respective markets. They probably thought that these 2 conglomerates would be like the fall of the Roman Empire, fast and dramatic. These small companies stood around for far too long and allowed these 2 big companies to take over and leave them in the dust, they never stood a chance. I was involved in the auto industry all my working life, in the 60s & 70s you could buy any thing at any Repco store, they had a complete range of Repco branded parts all manufactured by them in Australia. Now if you’re going to the beach and need a poly styrene cooler just pick one up at Repco, Oh how the mighty have fallen. They all watched the sunami and let it roll right over the top of them, it’s hard to find sympathy for these small companies, they failed to compete as Bunnings & Supacheap said so long suckers and never looked back.
Where ever your research was done it’s not correct ! I worked in the hardware industry as a supplier to all the majors Australia wide during the hay day of BBC , Mitre10 and the rise of Bunnings from a WA company as it expanded nation wide . WA Salvage was Bunnings breakaway start into the one stop shop. It developed the Bunnings Big Box startup . And away it went . Mitre 10 fort a fight it couldn’t win as suppliers Australia wide were hungry to stick it too Mitre10 as They were the most corrupt hardware company ever . Bunnings promised massive turnover of products and it did in the early days . Then the screws started to tighten and tighten till it was no longer viable to stay with Bunnings . Many many many good Australian companies were cut down and sent to the wall by Bunnings . By this time all the other competitors had fallen . There was talk of US based Walmart coming to Australia … this we hoped would happen . To see Bunnings get its arse kicked would be good
Bowens here in Victoria is trying pretty hard to stick it to Bunnings whenever it can. Unfortunately when you only cater to the real tradies rather than everyday small DIY people your going to need to work exceptionally harder to make a dent.
They want total market dominance in every market , but supply no after sales service at all , by that I mean spare parts for anything you buy, it just becomes landfill. And their prices just increase when their competition has gone
Reminds me of what happened in the ACT where the government banned Coles and Woolies from running their shops after 6pm but allowed smaller supermarkets the right to trade later hours 10pm or so. All it did was cause Coles and Woolies to buy out most of these types of mini supermarkets and woolies from memory marketed them as Woolies Metro a fraction of the size as these smaller supermarkets were tiny in comparison. So in the end I believe the government just dropped the law and at one time they had Coles/Woolies being able to trade 24x7, was great feel like some ice cream at 10pm no probs go down to one of the late night supermarkets and buy it at realistic prices not the $10/ice cream at the servo!
There was a strange situation circa 2004 when Coles bought the Bi-Lo at Ingle Farm Shopping Centre, Adelaide. Ingle Farm Shopping Centre has had two Coles ever since. Totally bizarre.
Northcote in Melb has two Coles in the same shopping centre, they put a second one in after they bought out Franklins and rebranded them all. Stops Woolworths moving in or Aldi
The problem with Mitre 10 is that each store is a silo. One store can’t check the stock at another etc. Tradies got sick of this and just stuck to Bunnings.
This is the one of the many many problems borders had .. I loved walking into a borders... But when the did not have the book on the shelves then they were a waste of time
@@jamesaustralian9829 I’ve been to three in Melbs in the last 6 months and all three couldn’t check stock at another store without calling the other store
Until recently there was still a Mitre 10 Mega (in orange no less) where I am in Beenleigh. The store is still there (although how they survive when there is a huge Bunnings 10 minutes away in Bethania I don't understand) but they recently redid the store in the normal Mitre 10 blue and white and dropped the "Mega" name.
You kind of miss out on the key period in the 90s. In particular the market share of Bunnings and the major competitors like Mitre 10. It wasn't just Underpants Gnome monopolizing, they actually had to work hard in that decade; not simply Phase 1 Buy into a market by acquiring a minor player, Phase 3 Monopoly. Also, the Coles I worked my first job in 2003 is now a Woolworths.
Just got to watching the vid. Good info, thanks for making it. Boy, remember when anti-trust was an *actual thing* ? Those were the days. We’ve really got to get back to that.
I remember McEwens, they built a big one on princes Highway opposite where ikea is now. Then it shut down all of a sudden and a new place called Bunnings warehouse was open next to Sandown racecourse. Of course they have shut that old store, and a new one opened ten years ago on princes Highway and Springvale rd. A much nicer store. The fountain gate store is getting a new one built behind it basically and it's looking to be gigantic. And the Dandenong Bunnings moved ends of Dandenong into the ex masters store where gmh was. And coles have setup in ex masters stores. I never go to mitre10 or similar.
Masters portfolio was sold to a consortium of big box store and turned to shopping centres, then was floated and merged with the owners of SuperCentre while also dabbling in convenience centres. Master's sister Home was sold to Metcash. Sometimes Masters stores were leased to Bunnings if they couldn't be sold, resulting in some Woolworthses with Bunnings in them. Some others were abandoned and instead temp-leased then belatedly redeveloped.
i find it interesting that Kmart and Bunnings are both going good in New Zealand but there is no Coles in NZ. there is Woolworths and they seem to have more competition in NZ till you look at who owns these chain stores like the ones I know is New World, Pak'n'Save, & Four Square were all owned by the same company. so my guess if Coles tried to enter the NZ market. Foodstuffs & Woolies would do their best to landbank. plus foodstuffs owns Flybuys so Coles can't use that either. Edit: after googling some stuff. Coles actually brought out a company that owned some supermarkets in New Zealand then in the late 2000s. Woolworths brought it and in around late 2000s they rebranded a lot of them to countdown with the woolies logo. recently they have been getting rebranded to Woolworths New Zealand
I found the section on Miter 10 Trade Centre and Bunnings Trade Centre, interesting as Miter 10 Trade Centre's seem to be everywhere in Northern Tasmania, and I had never heard of Bunnings trade Centre (or a regular non warehouse Bunnings).
Bunnings *caught murdering multiple companies* ACCC: "whoa whoa whoa... I can't in good conscience let you continue without my word in it" Bunnings: "oi! fair go, just slimming down on runts of the litter" ACCC: "at the very least wear a smock!" *Bunnings announces new uniform change* Bunnings: "happy now?" ACCC: "very much!"
The increasing poor quality home brand products in Bunnings is turning me off them. A lot of the floor staff are no longer as knowledgeable as they once were.
@@jamesaustralian9829 I am a former tradie and used to work for Bunnings. It's not worth it, the pay is lousy, the working conditions poor and the large amount of home brand products are of poor quality. It was a good day when I walked out and never went back.
Costco have been trying to enter the Australian market for a while and have been struggling due to Westfarmers greenfield acquisitions forcing them to open their store in not so good locations. And they have 10 times Westfarmers revenue, so I can't imagine anyone else competing !
They are a nightmare to work with, i have a family friend that worked for a bunnings supplier and bunnings wanted them to provide product to them for about 30% bellow cost price, the supplier said they could not afford to do so, so bunnings said "no worries we will just import it", they have cornered the market and screwed over supplier for years. but as a consumer you basically have no choice but to buy at bunnings. very smart business model
Bunning do not own the product that they sell. It is on consignment, they charge the suppliers for the display and storage space. Also, bring back for a credit an item, you get the credit, the product is binned, and the supplier has to cover the cost. A monopoly, bigger and nastier than Cole’s and Woolies.
Cant wait for bunnings new store to be open near me. All weve got is a horrendously overpriced mitre ten that has taken the piss with its prices for decades.
@contenteater the way he mentioned it made it sounds like it was just something they did early on to expand, I was just highlighting that it still happens.
I missed the local Mitre 10 when I had to travel 10 km to buy a small pack of screws or such. Maybe a $1 purchase became a 1 hour return trip, instead of a 15 minuit trip.
Bunnings make you buy a packet of 10-20 screws instead of 1-2. The old style hardware shops sold loose screws nails etc, perhaps that was a loss maker?
don't know that many tradies that shop at Bunnies, it's mainly the wanna be handy Jill that shops there getting ripped off well proppa. Get yourself a business card with a abs and shop direct with supplies, way cheaper
Everything you mentioned is competition and free market. If a nursery can't operate at a profit it shouldn't operate. In the end it is the customer that wins from Bunnings being the best operators and putting customers first
In theory yes that's how it should be, but its important to remember that Bunnings isn't really putting the customer first - they mark their products up a lot and have higher profit margins than that of Coles, Woolies, etc. And while yes you're correct that if these nurseries can't afford to keep themselves afloat then they're going to suffer, the way that Bunnings has situated itself as a prominent buyer in the greenlife sector means that a lot of nurseries have no choice but to sell to them in order to survive, which is where their lowballing becomes a problem.
Its pretty disappointing we allowed this. Substandard quality products and zero service. We saw how unprepared and unstaffed they were when the Cloudstrike outage hit Bunnings.
McEwans was fucking awesome I could spend all day walking around my local store at Footscray, I still have McEwans branded hand tools mainly sets of spanners. Cheaper than Sidchrome but decent quality for the DIYer.
talking about monopoly, Mobil is turning into BP, shell is now BP, some BP'S are shell now, Mobil sold to BP 15 years ago, than came back, all these servo's in adelaide have rebranded over night, some petrol stations left the game for a while and now its all BP
Bunnings is going the same way as coles/woolies now where a lot of what they sell is actually more expensive than it would be from a smaller company or a specialty store. These big names have become giant convenience stores rather than the discount stores they started off as. Supercheap is the same, it’s as dear as poison for anything except the low quality store brand junk. Why bother when nearly all you need is cheaper from eBay or Aliexpress and you don’t have to waste fuel and struggle for a carpark
Yup! They have opened several new stores this year & done many renovations to some of the others. They're really trying to make a good show of it, especially since they deal with many tradies. The reason it hasn't taken over is the focus on the tradies & more the building side whereas Bunnings tries to cover everything all at once from the casuals to the DIYs, Gardeners ect. They've essentially wiped out many garden centers too despite having less of a range at times.
Bunnings do not have correct customer service training in place. My experience recently at Bunnings Palmerston NT is: " Bunnings puts Customers last." Complaints have no impact on management, nor do management mentor staff appropriately.....one persons opinion.
Seems like it. This is something I'll discuss in part 3 of this Bunnings series - since they don't really have any competition, they have no real reason to spend the time and money on better trained staff. Because what are you gonna do? Go elsewhere?
Moral of the story.. buy property in the 1800s to become successful.. We have to hand it to creators like you, we'll done.. we get better quality and more interesting productions on YT than TV
I don't totally hate Wesfarmers with what they've done with Bunnings but they turned Kmart and Target into trashy one brand self-serve stores that are no longer even worth going to.
@@Dorainn Some claim it was a deja vu copy scandal that had taken place already earlier in the US. The company is born to shut after 5 years to force the stupid peasants to pay more for groceries. Just like in the US after shutdown they create a company called Endeavour and reclaim losses with de facto alcohol monopolies. I could be stepping intto a wasp nest spilling the beans!
This video is part one of my 3-part “Bunnings Dossier” series! The story was way too big for just one video, so this first one just covers the rise (and wrath) of Bunnings as a business.
Next up is the story of Masters Home Improvement, a story I’m sure you’re all familiar with, and then after that will be about the culture of Bunnings.
Super excited for all of this, if you’re new around here subscribe!
@@Dorainn I think Mitre 10 needs a mention, such as it taking on Bunnings and failing (except in NZ), being demutualised in 2012 (possibly as a result), splitting from Mitre 10 NZ, buying Danks, and creeping over Danks brands and some independent ones like Porters and Dahlsens.
It will be interesting to see your take on Masters. I worked with corporate at Masters so was privy to much of the inside shenanigans. To give you a little heads up at the end it was all about the real estate which had appreciated significantly and which Woolies owned exclusively. Lowes ran the business side effectively operating the stores hence the Masters 'blue'. Many stores ran at a loss but it could have been saved but unfortunately Woolies pulled the rug out from under Lowes and set them adrift. Sad really! There's much more to it than this brief discourse. Let's see what you can dig up
@@originalsusser Interesting that you worked with Masters' corporate! I have the script written and I must say that I don't discuss the aftermath of the Woolworths-Lowes JV too much because I wanted the video to be more about Masters' failings at a consumer level, but you're right, there's so much more to it than people realise. Make sure to leave a comment with your thoughts after the video releases, I'd love to read them!
I'm really hoping you get into the Masters saga -- apart from the pure business side there was a ridiculous amount of "hearts and minds" where Australians were championing its failure because they love Bunnings. Basically we killed the competition that might have saved us.
If you're interested in diving deeper into the Bunnings strangulation of its suppliers, find the book "The Walmart Effect". I bet there's a copy on every Westfarmers bedside table.
The beat it by 10% rule is also sort of a lie in that a lot of Bunnings' products are different brands & packages to what other shops offer, and quite often they'll use different quantities so you can't directly compare them (packet of 12 bolts instead of 10, etc).
(Source: used to work at a Mitre 10. Guess what business is in the building now.)
Supercheap, Repco do it too
Yes for sure! This is actually one way Bunnings hurt Masters while they were in business. I discuss this further in my next video
Second this. My Husband works for Bowens in the hardware department and would regularly tell me how Bunnings is a rip off and done everything to get a monopoly on the most common brands people could buy (especially power tools) so you practically only have one place to get them from with no price competition. Good for Bunnings, bad for customers who cannot shop around
@@timepatches absolutely. They even get Ryobi and the like to give them different model numbers on essentially same product.
@@GalileoFigar0Same as Officeworks.Same printer with different colour and therefore a different number = not the same = no 10% discount. Also it seems you can’t get Ryobi anywhere else than Bunnings.
There is no bigger joke in Australia than the ACCC
Australia the home off duopolys
Yes, and they just let Chemist Warehouse take over Sigma/Amcal pharmacies.
I don't feel like it's unlikely that our officials are just being paid off at this point.
Well done yong man. Clearly an enourmous amount of research and work put into this for us. Very impressed. Well done.
Great video the only thing I think you missed was The Rise and the fall of masters home improvement which obviously was supposed to be the big competition from the Woolworths side
Fun fact, Mitre 10 was originally, then Home
I miss Masters :(
@ apparently it was a terrible company controlled by Lowes Home Improvement and then underwriters Great American
Making a seperate video about Masters!
How long did Masters last? I can’t even remember. Two years? It wasn’t too long
All this money and the bunnings I work at still functions on the most BARE MINIMUM amount of staff that they possibly could, leaving the rest of us overworked and severely demotivated
Not at any store I have been to. There's plenty of time for a chat amongst the staff but if you ask it's all 'I don't know, I just started here.'
Not all staff flob you off but a lot do, especially the younger ones who know Bunnings is one step up from Maccas.
Do they also encourage staff to run away from customers and hide when they need help?
Staff levels in the isles is abysmal.
"Never wound what you can't kill" goes so hard
And it’s a quote from fucking Topher Grace’s Venom from Spider-Man 3, of all things 😂
@@Dorainn oh my gosh 😭
Regulators are there to be blinded with a new form of trap!
I love the dig at Masters at the end, and what a massive flop it was. I also think its worth mentioning the bunnings snags, its such an iconic thing that cemented it as a proper aussie brand for many people.
Yeah for sure, this is part one of a series of videos I’m doing about Bunnings, Masters is the next episode then “Bunnings culture” as I’m calling it is third
Masters did sausage sizzles too
Wesfarmers already had the good and well trained staff. Woolworths scooped up badly trained "junkies". To blame it on Lowe's failure to recognise seasons was weak.
@@LawpickingLocksmith Woolworths had nothing to do with the employment of staff at Masters. Just like Bunnings have always done Masters employed ppl with various retail experience who showed aptitude or knowledge for hardware, and believe me there are plenty of contenders out there, instore training only involved OHS, store practice and supplier product training not hardware sales training. Your summation is as contorted as your handle
@@originalsusser Some people just don't see it: Personally I prefer Coles as staff is actually trained to help. WW staff just block the aisles when restocking. Same when Masters opened, sure they had tradies but ever noticed how Bunnings has that person of first impression greeting you something that goes a long way for customer satisfaction. Also the many women there are trained to handle rough tradies. Masters had the idea of serving feminists on their white painted floors. A fresh idea to no avail.
One of the other reasons bunnings does so well is we do not have much choice in rural areas, so the one or two hardware stores in small cities have pretty healthy markups.
As soon as a Bunnings gets built, their buying power and prices puts the others out of business forcing them to have monopoly then on that location.
That's the suckiest part about all of this - unstoppable urban sprawl means the big chains will always beat the local stuff.
Oh right so my local rip off mitre ten is supposed to keep ripping me off, and if Bunnings comes and sells me cheaper stuff that's bad....
You are foolish to think this is a good company. Their mandate is to put out of business every other business. They have the power to cripple suppliers that don’t bow down to them. Their margins are getting fatter and fatter as they send another supplier broke and get the goods copied over in china. The quality is spiralling down. You think you getting it cheaper but you are not. You are just buying inferior product. They also employ 1 to 5 of a small business. It is just another monopoly business wrecking our economy.
Monopolies jack up captured customers once formed so yeah it is bad. Coles and woolies recent price hikes? Or uber, before it decimated the taxi industry was significantly cheaper - now its basically the same price as taxis but the workers are underpaid and have no workplace rights. So yeh monopolies are bad.
Monopolies jack up captured customers once formed so yeah it is bad. Coles and woolies recent price hikes? Or uber, before it decimated the taxi industry was significantly cheaper - now its basically the same price as taxis but the workers are underpaid and have no workplace rights. So yeh monopolies are bad.
Your videos are so underrated, don’t give up on the content.
3:56
Not quite an outright buyout but in a centre in Adelaide a similar thing happened
-kmart moved out due to low sales
-bigw took over the space.
-coles didn't like being next door to bigw so they gave up their lease.
-woolworths is taking over the Coles space.
-coles put a Liquorland next to what will be Woolies just so W can't put a bws there
At the same time Coles has a centre with 2 Coles within 100m of each other so it's unlike Coles to give up a space
Ah yes northcote plaza
They opened a shop in peppermint grove wa, 1 of the most expensive areas in Australia 5 years later when all the remaining small hardware shops had closed down they closed the branch down and turned it into a Woolworths shop. Now everyone travels further and competition is none.
Nice to see a new video man. Very entertaining and informative
The fact that Woolworths Limited working in concert with Bunnings’ closest US equivalent, Lowe’s*, resourced with a seemingly bottomless pot of cash and a leisurely ten years before any expectation of profitability, couldn’t put a dent in Bunnings’ stranglehold over the market really shows just how powerful a category killer they are.
@@GalileoFigar0 Apparently Lowes and Great American bungled its pricing anyway
@ oh yeah, it was Lowe’s, not Home Depot. My bad.
@ what’s Great American?
@ The liquidator who bought the inventory from Woolworths and managed the closing down sales
Their store layout also killed them. Some things made zero sense. ie Light fittings and light bulbs half a store apart was beyond stupid
Wow, Being born in 1994 I recall the other Bunnings competitors all going under. But I didn't realise that they were completely unknown outside of WA and were primarily just a timber wholesaler until the 1990s. That's shockingly recent.
5:25 Technically they kept BBC Hardware as Bunnings Trade. *Edit - they didn’t collapse apparently
6:18 They also bought a few others, such as some Dahlsens stores when it offloaded its consumer operations to Mitre 10 around 2012, and certain Masters stores when they couldn't be leased to HomeCo and aren't too close to a Bunnings (sometimes resulting in Woolworths Marketplaces with Bunnings in them).
6:25 Woolworths actually was going to take over Mitre 10 but it was deemed to complex, so they took over Home instead. They would later sell Home to Mitre 10 after appointing sale managers to Masters. Mitre 10 would meanwhile have divorced its NZ master franchisee and be demutualised and sold to IGA master franchisee Metcash, who would in turn sell its automotive business to Burson. (Maybe Mitre 10 was also short on cash?)
Mitre 10 is still owner by Metcash. Metcash also owns Total Tools. I know because I buy stone stuff for our independent trade center from the Danks warehouse. Which is Metcash/Mitre 10
Things I love doing: going to Bunnings
Things I hate doing: going to Woolies/Coles
They still employ burger flippers - encountered no knowledge staff in the Tool Shop, Flooring & Tile from my recent experience. Review a product and if it's negative they don't allow the posting. Recent issue with grout and staff shrugged their shoulders, approached the supplier (Dunlop) and they did the same. Also have an issue with the small items they hang at the end of an isle - if it's a high traffic path you should be able to see anyone approaching like a road intersection but they stack em high & when you bump into others the corner stuff hanging gets knocked off. Small gripes but as a frequent visitor you see the short comings - they have 3 levels of store size that I have seen. Springvale is an A store, Nottinghill formerly Homehardware is a B & Chadstone is a C or as I call it 'the fluffy store' but it's walking distance so I start with there.
Yeah, the different store sizes are weird. I assumed that the massive stores - the ones that all look largely the same - would be called "Bunnings Warehouse" and everything else just "Bunnings", but that doesn't seem to be the case. There's some Bunning Warehouses that are built into shopping centres!
What was your grout problem?
@@aussie8114 Liquid bottles with color match - Buff was pictured on bottle but when applied it was nothing like it so instead of a repair I would have to regrout whole job. Dunlop said they'd look into it & sent a rep to take my bottle away for testing. 2wks & still no news so rang and said can you replace it - need to get repair done. They give me a new bottle but color is still wrong, so I had to do the whole shower but now it doesn't match the bath tiles so had to grout that as well.
I find it amazing that all these retail stores like Mitre10 and Home hardware, even stores like Repco, and Auto pro, they all watched as Bunnings and Supacheap started to dominate their respective markets. They probably thought that these 2 conglomerates would be like the fall of the Roman Empire, fast and dramatic. These small companies stood around for far too long and allowed these 2 big companies to take over and leave them in the dust, they never stood a chance. I was involved in the auto industry all my working life, in the 60s & 70s you could buy any thing at any Repco store, they had a complete range of Repco branded parts all manufactured by them in Australia. Now if you’re going to the beach and need a poly styrene cooler just pick one up at Repco, Oh how the mighty have fallen. They all watched the sunami and let it roll right over the top of them, it’s hard to find sympathy for these small companies, they failed to compete as Bunnings & Supacheap said so long suckers and never looked back.
We don’t have any other hardware stores except Bunnings where I live!
Where ever your research was done it’s not correct !
I worked in the hardware industry as a supplier to all the majors Australia wide during the hay day of BBC , Mitre10 and the rise of Bunnings from a WA company as it expanded nation wide .
WA Salvage was Bunnings breakaway start into the one stop shop. It developed the Bunnings Big Box startup .
And away it went .
Mitre 10 fort a fight it couldn’t win as suppliers Australia wide were hungry to stick it too Mitre10 as They were the most corrupt hardware company ever .
Bunnings promised massive turnover of products and it did in the early days . Then the screws started to tighten and tighten till it was no longer viable to stay with Bunnings .
Many many many good Australian companies were cut down and sent to the wall by Bunnings .
By this time all the other competitors had fallen .
There was talk of US based Walmart coming to Australia … this we hoped would happen . To see Bunnings get its arse kicked would be good
Bowens here in Victoria is trying pretty hard to stick it to Bunnings whenever it can. Unfortunately when you only cater to the real tradies rather than everyday small DIY people your going to need to work exceptionally harder to make a dent.
I am not sure even the might of Wal-Mart could survive against the behemoth that is K-Mart and its private label empire.
@@meikahidenoriBowen's have taken over and expanded the old Bunnings in Melton.
They want total market dominance in every market , but supply no after sales service at all , by that I mean spare parts for anything you buy, it just becomes landfill. And their prices just increase when their competition has gone
Great video, I liked the little joke at the end! Nice to watch something to remind me of home.
Your videos are so high quality! How do you only have 43.6K subscribers?
He's had this quality even from a few thousand subs! It's honestly crazy
RUclips wants dumb viewers who fall for idiotic advertising!
Reminds me of what happened in the ACT where the government banned Coles and Woolies from running their shops after 6pm but allowed smaller supermarkets the right to trade later hours 10pm or so.
All it did was cause Coles and Woolies to buy out most of these types of mini supermarkets and woolies from memory marketed them as Woolies Metro a fraction of the size as these smaller supermarkets were tiny in comparison.
So in the end I believe the government just dropped the law and at one time they had Coles/Woolies being able to trade 24x7, was great feel like some ice cream at 10pm no probs go down to one of the late night supermarkets and buy it at realistic prices not the $10/ice cream at the servo!
I forgot Home even existed. They came and went so quietly I didn’t even notice they were gone
There was a strange situation circa 2004 when Coles bought the Bi-Lo at Ingle Farm Shopping Centre, Adelaide. Ingle Farm Shopping Centre has had two Coles ever since. Totally bizarre.
Northcote in Melb has two Coles in the same shopping centre, they put a second one in after they bought out Franklins and rebranded them all. Stops Woolworths moving in or Aldi
The ACCC looks like it believes in self regulation - because we know it works so well /s ...
They also believe there's no collusion in petrol pricing.
The problem with Mitre 10 is that each store is a silo. One store can’t check the stock at another etc. Tradies got sick of this and just stuck to Bunnings.
The Tradeys got that 10 outta 10 experience, everytime 🤣 🎶
This is the one of the many many problems borders had .. I loved walking into a borders... But when the did not have the book on the shelves then they were a waste of time
Yes they can
My BIL always refers to them as Mighty Unhelpful.
@@jamesaustralian9829 I’ve been to three in Melbs in the last 6 months and all three couldn’t check stock at another store without calling the other store
Until recently there was still a Mitre 10 Mega (in orange no less) where I am in Beenleigh. The store is still there (although how they survive when there is a huge Bunnings 10 minutes away in Bethania I don't understand) but they recently redid the store in the normal Mitre 10 blue and white and dropped the "Mega" name.
You kind of miss out on the key period in the 90s. In particular the market share of Bunnings and the major competitors like Mitre 10. It wasn't just Underpants Gnome monopolizing, they actually had to work hard in that decade; not simply Phase 1 Buy into a market by acquiring a minor player, Phase 3 Monopoly.
Also, the Coles I worked my first job in 2003 is now a Woolworths.
Just got to watching the vid. Good info, thanks for making it. Boy, remember when anti-trust was an *actual thing* ? Those were the days. We’ve really got to get back to that.
Cheers for checking back in mate, good to see you again
I remember McEwens, they built a big one on princes Highway opposite where ikea is now. Then it shut down all of a sudden and a new place called Bunnings warehouse was open next to Sandown racecourse. Of course they have shut that old store, and a new one opened ten years ago on princes Highway and Springvale rd. A much nicer store. The fountain gate store is getting a new one built behind it basically and it's looking to be gigantic. And the Dandenong Bunnings moved ends of Dandenong into the ex masters store where gmh was.
And coles have setup in ex masters stores. I never go to mitre10 or similar.
Masters portfolio was sold to a consortium of big box store and turned to shopping centres, then was floated and merged with the owners of SuperCentre while also dabbling in convenience centres. Master's sister Home was sold to Metcash.
Sometimes Masters stores were leased to Bunnings if they couldn't be sold, resulting in some Woolworthses with Bunnings in them. Some others were abandoned and instead temp-leased then belatedly redeveloped.
i find it interesting that Kmart and Bunnings are both going good in New Zealand but there is no Coles in NZ. there is Woolworths and they seem to have more competition in NZ till you look at who owns these chain stores like the ones I know is New World, Pak'n'Save, & Four Square were all owned by the same company. so my guess if Coles tried to enter the NZ market. Foodstuffs & Woolies would do their best to landbank. plus foodstuffs owns Flybuys so Coles can't use that either.
Edit: after googling some stuff. Coles actually brought out a company that owned some supermarkets in New Zealand then in the late 2000s. Woolworths brought it and in around late 2000s they rebranded a lot of them to countdown with the woolies logo. recently they have been getting rebranded to Woolworths New Zealand
I found the section on Miter 10 Trade Centre and Bunnings Trade Centre, interesting as Miter 10 Trade Centre's seem to be everywhere in Northern Tasmania, and I had never heard of Bunnings trade Centre (or a regular non warehouse Bunnings).
What was the issue with them closing down some stores in NZ. Especially ones that were only built within 5 years then closed down
Very informative and well researched video!
Subbed!
👍👍👍
In Katoomba NSW the Coles/Kmart store was bought by an unnamed buyer which turned out to be Woolies. When the lease expired Coles had to move.
Bunnings *caught murdering multiple companies*
ACCC: "whoa whoa whoa... I can't in good conscience let you continue without my word in it"
Bunnings: "oi! fair go, just slimming down on runts of the litter"
ACCC: "at the very least wear a smock!"
*Bunnings announces new uniform change*
Bunnings: "happy now?"
ACCC: "very much!"
Love the shot of the Whitfords (Atkinsons) Mitre 10 - my local!
Bunnings took over only because of those free sausage sizzles
Free?
@ they aren’t free anymore?
Was the “you’ve… mastered the market” a hint at masters? The other hardware store?
The increasing poor quality home brand products in Bunnings is turning me off them. A lot of the floor staff are no longer as knowledgeable as they once were.
I've applied to work at the Bunnings getting built near me, more so to pass on my 25 years trade knowledge to others.
@ I hope you get the job. Once most floor staff were tradies and they knew their stuff. Good luck.
@@jamesaustralian9829 I am a former tradie and used to work for Bunnings. It's not worth it, the pay is lousy, the working conditions poor and the large amount of home brand products are of poor quality. It was a good day when I walked out and never went back.
Costco have been trying to enter the Australian market for a while and have been struggling due to Westfarmers greenfield acquisitions forcing them to open their store in not so good locations. And they have 10 times Westfarmers revenue, so I can't imagine anyone else competing !
They are a nightmare to work with, i have a family friend that worked for a bunnings supplier and bunnings wanted them to provide product to them for about 30% bellow cost price, the supplier said they could not afford to do so, so bunnings said "no worries we will just import it", they have cornered the market and screwed over supplier for years. but as a consumer you basically have no choice but to buy at bunnings. very smart business model
Bunning do not own the product that they sell. It is on consignment, they charge the suppliers for the display and storage space. Also, bring back for a credit an item, you get the credit, the product is binned, and the supplier has to cover the cost. A monopoly, bigger and nastier than Cole’s and Woolies.
Incorrect on all suppliers and consignment.
yes unethical business practices.. that's so Australian.
Unethical business practice of good cutting service.
This is absolutely not true
@@hardman1320 do your research
Cant wait for bunnings new store to be open near me. All weve got is a horrendously overpriced mitre ten that has taken the piss with its prices for decades.
You didn't mention Masters !
You missed the last line!
I’m working on a seperate video about Masters 🤙
Keep the business videos coming!
Do you plan on covering the introduction and failure of Masters
Yep got a script written, video will be out in a couple weeks
I worked for an M10 that was sold to Bunnings very recently
Congratulations 🤷♂️
@contenteater the way he mentioned it made it sounds like it was just something they did early on to expand, I was just highlighting that it still happens.
@@YooToobah Didn't know this - interesting that it still happens
Whats with the blue Mitre10? I'm from nz and have only ever seen it in orange
Mitre10 NZ and AUS used to be one company but they broke off I believe. The NZ company decided to change colors
I missed the local Mitre 10 when I had to travel 10 km to buy a small pack of screws or such. Maybe a $1 purchase became a 1 hour return trip, instead of a 15 minuit trip.
Nowdays that one small pack of screws from mitre ten is the same price as a 500 screw tub from Bunnings
Barrier to entry is the equivalent to skill floor, great vid 👍
Awesome video!!
@@Mralec cheers 🤙
Commenting for the algorithm
Cheers Sean
Bunnings make you buy a packet of 10-20 screws instead of 1-2. The old style hardware shops sold loose screws nails etc, perhaps that was a loss maker?
You need to do more of these types of videos
don't know that many tradies that shop at Bunnies, it's mainly the wanna be handy Jill that shops there getting ripped off well proppa.
Get yourself a business card with a abs and shop direct with supplies, way cheaper
Good work Punter
7:20 - Or 15% in New Zealand! 😁
Didn’t even mention the snags! It’s like a magic “don’t worry about it” payment
Saving the snags for a larger 'Bunnings Culture' video coming soon. This one's just purely about the business side of things :)
mastered the market..... I see what you did there. 😉
Decided to sub and like, this was interesting. How about a video on Westfarmers.
@@aussietaipan8700 I might do a larger video on Wesfarmers and Blackrock type shit, I mean ive already done videos about their subsidiaries
Mitre 10 near me closed, the difference between it and Bunnings was not vast, but Bunnings just has it all honed too well to compete with
Everything you mentioned is competition and free market. If a nursery can't operate at a profit it shouldn't operate. In the end it is the customer that wins from Bunnings being the best operators and putting customers first
In theory yes that's how it should be, but its important to remember that Bunnings isn't really putting the customer first - they mark their products up a lot and have higher profit margins than that of Coles, Woolies, etc. And while yes you're correct that if these nurseries can't afford to keep themselves afloat then they're going to suffer, the way that Bunnings has situated itself as a prominent buyer in the greenlife sector means that a lot of nurseries have no choice but to sell to them in order to survive, which is where their lowballing becomes a problem.
Yeah and John Marsten founded Mitre 10 i think
You might be thinking of Jim Milton 🤠
Mastered the market. I see what you did there.
There’s definitely a lot of cheap crap at Bunnings. I guess they’re doing their bit for generating land fill.
My question is, what about masters?
Its pretty disappointing we allowed this. Substandard quality products and zero service. We saw how unprepared and unstaffed they were when the Cloudstrike outage hit Bunnings.
Didn’t know I neeeded this
Bunnings .... the next stop before the tip .... loves competition ... as long as there is no competition
McEwans was fucking awesome I could spend all day walking around my local store at Footscray, I still have McEwans branded hand tools mainly sets of spanners. Cheaper than Sidchrome but decent quality for the DIYer.
More of these videos plzzzzz
Are you planning a patreon support or anything would be keen to chip into such quality local aussie content
@@user-gw5sn8rc2k more than likely yes, probably something in the new year. Cheers mate I appreciate it
The only thing that could shut down Bunnings is wallmart
Home Timber & Hardware was founded in 1993 as a subsidiary of Dank's.
who was later controlled by Woolworths, then Mitre 10
@@jordanferrazza8700 Some Lloyds store in SA became Banner for a short time before Home took place.
talking about monopoly, Mobil is turning into BP, shell is now BP, some BP'S are shell now, Mobil sold to BP 15 years ago, than came back, all these servo's in adelaide have rebranded over night, some petrol stations left the game for a while and now its all BP
Vsauce music be balling 😌👂🎼
Bunnings is becoming expensive to the point I have stopped shopping their for most things
Bunnings is going the same way as coles/woolies now where a lot of what they sell is actually more expensive than it would be from a smaller company or a specialty store. These big names have become giant convenience stores rather than the discount stores they started off as. Supercheap is the same, it’s as dear as poison for anything except the low quality store brand junk. Why bother when nearly all you need is cheaper from eBay or Aliexpress and you don’t have to waste fuel and struggle for a carpark
They are become Australia's Buy N Large
reminds me of how the cigarette makers screwed over the tobacco growers around Myrtleford.
Bowens is on the rise trust me
Yup! They have opened several new stores this year & done many renovations to some of the others. They're really trying to make a good show of it, especially since they deal with many tradies. The reason it hasn't taken over is the focus on the tradies & more the building side whereas Bunnings tries to cover everything all at once from the casuals to the DIYs, Gardeners ect. They've essentially wiped out many garden centers too despite having less of a range at times.
Bunnings do not have correct customer service training in place. My experience recently at Bunnings Palmerston NT is: " Bunnings puts Customers last." Complaints have no impact on management, nor do management mentor staff appropriately.....one persons opinion.
Love that place
Sad that we have headed fora monopoly in the hardware sector. Lately I find that most workers there are little help.
Seems like it. This is something I'll discuss in part 3 of this Bunnings series - since they don't really have any competition, they have no real reason to spend the time and money on better trained staff. Because what are you gonna do? Go elsewhere?
No competition full monopoly ... now that's Australian..
Moral of the story.. buy property in the 1800s to become successful..
We have to hand it to creators like you, we'll done.. we get better quality and more interesting productions on YT than TV
Haha seems that way. Maybe I should've been building up a property portfolio back then, instead of... not existing.
Remember Masters Hardware?
They haven’t totally monopolised the market. There’s still Hammerbarn. 🐕🐕🐕
Whats Hammerbarn... p.s . in South Australia
@@jamesperrett1887 From season 2, episode 2 of Bluey.
Naw
I don't totally hate Wesfarmers with what they've done with Bunnings but they turned Kmart and Target into trashy one brand self-serve stores that are no longer even worth going to.
Except the shopping experience at Mitre 10 is superior.
cole myer n Woolworths are a monopoly in Australia,, Woolworths own the most pokies in qld,,, facts
Bunnings is a rip off not exactly that cheap
As a tradie, i love bunnings "NO QUESTIONS ASKED RETURN" it has saved me thousands.
@@simplefilemaker327 yeah, I heard in my research that the returns policy was a big pro for a lot of people - it must come in handy
why aint masters in the thumbnail thatd be pretty funny
Masters deserves and is getting its own video 😅
You have totally ignored the Masters saga! Well there is just too much never to be released, just keep the customer dumb and rip them off!
I'm making a seperate video about Masters, stay tuned
Subtle tip of the hat to masters with the closing comment
@@Dorainn Some claim it was a deja vu copy scandal that had taken place already earlier in the US. The company is born to shut after 5 years to force the stupid peasants to pay more for groceries. Just like in the US after shutdown they create a company called Endeavour and reclaim losses with de facto alcohol monopolies. I could be stepping intto a wasp nest spilling the beans!
Masters showed how dangerous it is to live with a monopoly!