As many may have heard, the Woolies attempt to take on Bunnings has cost them dearly. Apparently Masters has lost $700 Million (or thereabouts)

I remember when l first heard that Woolies was going to take on Bunnings l did think it would be a good thing for us consumers.  I honestly thought it would have led to lower prices and l thought it would have resulted in big hardware stores being even closer to home…. How wrong my assumptions turned out to be.

I don’t know about you, but l have not noticed much in the way of a price war. In fact l see that the two chains stock different brands of items to prevent the consumer from playing the price match guarantee up against each store.

I guess the biggest disappointment for me was the fact that Woolies decided to build their stores directly opposite Bunnings stores, in effect they did not enable consumers from the “Other End Of Town” to have a hardware giant closer to them because they planted themselves right on top of Bunnings.

It now is the case that when you visit a Bunnings you also have another set of traffic lights (Freshly Installed) down the road a few metres to accommodate the Masters store.

The positioning of each Masters store has not contributed positively to the consumer needs, it has actually had a negative effect and l guess it is for that reason that l can honestly say l have no sympathy for Masters having lost $700 Million dollars.

As a side note… I would like to know what the various councils were thinking when they approved the building and subsequent over supply of hardware giants within such close proximity of each other. I suppose that all came back down to “Money” and the power of the corporate giants…. while many of us will have to fight and struggle to build a car port to protect our cars from the elements, some people or should l say “Corporate Giants” can do as they please.