John Journee: Warehouse Group interim CEO on the company's multi-million dollar net loss

The Warehouse Group says this year's unacceptable earnings have two parts.

It's posting a $54.2 million net loss after tax.

Last year it made a $29.9 million profit.

Sales at The Warehouse and Noel Leeming are down 5.3 percent and Warehouse Stationery is down 6.7 percent.

Interim CEO, John Journee says they get it right most of the time, but it needs to be all the time.

"Part of it is strategy and part of it is execution. We had a strategy, set it out five years ago - it was, in hindsight, too ambitious and also distracted us from looking after our core brands."

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Heather duper Cela now it was a bit of a
blood bath for the Warehouse Today the group announced a
fifty four million dollar loss for the year. The chair
Joan Withers has described it as unacceptable. Jean Journe is
the interim chief executive at the Warehouse Group and with
us now, hey John Hi, Heather Jones says, it's unacceptable.

Speaker 2 (00:18):
What do you say, totally agree. We're certainly not where
we need to be and the result there's a poor performance.

Speaker 1 (00:25):
What's gone wrong? Do you think.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Part of it is strategy and part of its execution.
We had a strategy set about five years ago that
was in hindsight to ambitious and also distracted us from
looking after our core brands at the level of detail
that we need to so.

Speaker 1 (00:43):
Core brand being obviously the Warehouse. What needs to change
at our warehouse?

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Do you think, sorry, what was that? Head?

Speaker 1 (00:50):
What needs to change at the warehouse?

Speaker 2 (00:54):
We need to get better more often. You know, we
get it right most of the time. We need to
get right all the time. And that's the difference in
retail retails detail Customers notice when you get your detail wrong,
and we've dropped the ball on that by.

Speaker 1 (01:08):
That is that like, if you've got is it quality problems?
Is it coolness problems?

Speaker 2 (01:14):
What is it's it's the small things that make a
difference here. You know, basically, when you're in retail, you
have to get everything right. And we've got things right
that we were focusing on. That we missed the ball
and that on the areas we weren't focusing on. We
had moved more of our range in the warehouse to continuity,

(01:34):
daily essentials, everyday needs, and that's an important part of
the offer and customers are loving for us for that
part of the range. But that's not all they wanted
from us. They wanted newness, excitement, trend coolness, keenness, and
we used to give them that in spades, and when
we moved into the sort of trying to be earnest

(01:56):
about our core essentials, which is really important, we lost
that excitement, we lost the emphasis and the other parts
of what people wanted from us. And that's what we've
recognized as one of the core turnaround fixes that we
need to do. We've already started on that, but unfortunately
it takes a while for that product to show up
in store, so it's only just showing up now. But

(02:17):
when it is showing up, our customers are loving it.
You know, they've been really disappointed that we haven't given
it to them before. Just like you said before, you
would expect us to do it. We didn't do it
for you. Our customers are saying the same on a
number of lines. But again, when we get it back
in stock, they go, yay, you're back. We love it

(02:38):
because we've got ninety two million people visiting our stores
every year. They really want us to be back in
the game we used to be. They want us to
be and we're determined to be back in there.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
You like a bad boyfriend day. We want to love you,
but you should making it hard with the warehouse.

Speaker 2 (02:54):
What about we're the one that got awaid? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Is that right? Positive? Been on? It's going wrong with then.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Nles has actually performed the strongest through the period we've
been distracted. So their model is quite strong. I heard
before that you've had some service issues. That's disappointing. It
is not the general experience we get from our customers.
They are at promoter Score, which is the measure of
our customer satisfaction, is the highest in a no Lemming brand,
and they are the market leader, and through a tough time,

(03:27):
they've actually held their market share and held their customer
base the best of our all three brands. But even
they have suffered a little bit around the group distractions,
around the bigger picture that the ecosystem strategy, so they
weren't spending all their time on what mattered to no
leaming customers. And it's those little things that make a difference.

(03:48):
The fact that we should have had the staff member
knowing which apple which watch was waterproof. You know, that
is what we do. That is something that we pride ourselves,
you know, basically our teams proudly call themselves passionate experts.
I spent a lot of time on product knowledge and
learning about that products. You know, whether that was an
isolated example, we've got the wrong person on the wrong day,

(04:10):
but that doesn't really matter to you or your husband
that got the wrong advice.

Speaker 1 (04:15):
I don't even have a watch John for my birthday.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
Now, and I'm gusted to worry.

Speaker 1 (04:20):
I know how to use the internet. I'll order it
from you. Guys. Hey, listen very quickly on the Stephen
Tindall thing, are you guys still is that office still.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Light or no that's in Stephen's core. We don't have
any control over what our shareholders do, and don't they.

Speaker 1 (04:34):
Listen, John, thank you for talking to us, and I
really really hope you are able to turn this around, because,
as I say, we do love your business. That is
John Jena, who is the interim chief executive at the
Warehouse and has obviously got his work cut out for them.
Nineteen away from six.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
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