Mark Stirton: Warehouse Group CEO hopeful the retailer can grow following recent net loss

The Warehouse Group's chief executive is confident he can turn the retail giant around. 

It's reporting an annual net loss of $2.76 million dollars - a major improvement from last year's $54.2 million dollar loss.

Noel Leeming is performing the best, with revenue up 3.3 percent.

Chief executive Mark Stirton says they're moving away from a digital focus to give more attention to shoppers in-store. 

"Our urban areas are where we've got a lot more competition - we probably haven't invested enough in the store experience, and things like lighting and visual merchandising and the way we present our product."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
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Speaker 2 (00:16):
Right.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
The Warehouse Group has had another tough year, it's been reported,
or rather it has reported a net loss of two
point eight million dollars for the year. Mark Sturton is
the chief executive of the Warehouse Group. Har Mark, Hi,
you that tough day for.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
You, guys. Yeah, it's a tough day. You know. The
economy is in a tough space as well, and we're
feeling it as a retailer in these conditions, and consumers
are doing a tough and yeah, we're proud that we
were able to keep our top line in the positive
in this environment, but unfortunately we had to reduce some

(00:49):
of our priss and be competitive with a lot more
promotions and clearance, which hurt our gross margins and they're
ultimately our result at the bottom line, despite doing some
really good work on cost control.

Speaker 3 (01:01):
How much of what is going on with the Warehouse
is down to the economy and how much of it
is down to the Warehouse and its own problems.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Yeah, I think that the economy is definitely weighing on
the on the consumer sentiments. I mean, we're still getting
over all the brands. We still get one point seven
million people come through our doors every week, which is
incredible number of visits for us as a brand. So
we're definitely getting the foot traffic and our conversions up
across all our brands, which is great. People are finding

(01:30):
the things that we that they want. Unfortunately, the basket
sizes are are not as big as what they need
to be, and that's also a function of the mix
of the products that people are buying. We're seeing a
lot more people buying into smaller items, ticket items, which
you know, you have to sell a lot more of
those to make up the dollars that you need in
order to get the top line moving, so and a

(01:52):
lot of those items come at lower margins. So that's
really the story is that we've and that's across all
three of our brands. We've found that the mix of
the products that are being sold is actually also affecting
our gross margin.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
How long have you been in the job now?

Speaker 2 (02:07):
Ours the group's CFO, and I came over in April
last year, so yeah, I've been in that role for
fifteen months and then I took over on the first
of August, the.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
CEO, Okay, do you see a way to turn this around?

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Definitely. I think we've got incredible brands. I've actually I
can't believe that we've actually got that endowment of one
point seven million feet. I mean, you think about New
Zealand's a population of five point two million, and you've
got that amount of visitors coming through your stores every week.
It's owns our job to convert those feet into more
meaningful baskets. And you know, our stores under our old

(02:42):
strategy was more digitally focused, and we're going to get
more focused on our stores. We've got some incredible house
brands that have probably fallen by the wayside, and we're
going to amplify those. And so we're really going to
dig into our rural and regional roots, which were exceptionally
strong as a business in those towns and cities. And
then those are our urban areas where we've got a
lot more competition. We probably haven't invested enough in the

(03:04):
store experience and things like lighting and visual merchandising and
the way we present our products. And we're getting some
amazing traction and our beauty range, and you know, we've
seen there's a lot of green shoots around the business,
but we would be lovely if the economy also played ball,
and we really hopeful that the ocr cuts that hopefully
come up will help us on our journey.

Speaker 3 (03:27):
Yeah, best of luck with that, Mark, Thanks so much,
Mark Stirs and Chief executive of the Warehouse Group.

Speaker 1 (03:31):
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