For those that dont know, eastern hi fi in receivership...

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richms

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#56519 14-Jan-2010 22:52

http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/eastern-hi-fi-in-receivership-3330079

I expected this to happen sooner, in anycase, will be interesting to see if it rises from the ashes without the burden of all that unused property leases or if it really has had its day.

I have refused to use them since one of their sales people was a real dropkick when I questioned why they were over twice the price for a reciver vs the US$ price converted.

IMO good riddence to them.

Richard rich.ms

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#290184 15-Jan-2010 08:21

richms: http://tvnz.co.nz/business-news/eastern-hi-fi-in-receivership-3330079

I expected this to happen sooner, in anycase, will be interesting to see if it rises from the ashes without the burden of all that unused property leases or if it really has had its day.

I have refused to use them since one of their sales people was a real dropkick when I questioned why they were over twice the price for a reciver vs the US$ price converted.

IMO good riddence to them.

Without wishng to be seen to support EHF I can't help but feel your question to the sales person is unfair. It is probably equally fair to have asked why the price was 3 times (?) that of the manufactured costs when it left the factory in China. Its simply a discussion I don't think NZ sales peoeple need to get into for any product.

If you want to buy in US$ do so. That way you can avoid paying the GST NZ'ers have to pay. You can also pay the freight on a 25kg box. The savings you make will cover any issues you have with a guarantee and of course you'll be prepared to flag away your rights under the CGA. Feel free to support US retailers who probably sell 100,000 units (and get a better discount for bulk) and don't worry about the NZ business person stumping up with the readies to try to run a business to satisfy NZ customers. Of course, you'll have no expectation of after-sales servies and support. Commision based minimum wagers are probably doing well having a scant knowledge of product but if you expect them to have an understanding of FX, hedging, customs agents and duties, nz corporate tax rates and employee entitlements (like 8% holiday pay and ACC) then good luck. Some will struggle explaining what region the DVD player they sell plays.

A fairer question might have been "Why are you $X more than Paul Money or JB Hi Fi" down the road!

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#290185 15-Jan-2010 08:22

It's certainly not a surprise after reading their financial report from the middle of last year when they warned of the problems.

richms

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#290328 15-Jan-2010 14:21

minimoke:
Without wishng to be seen to support EHF I can't help but feel your question to the sales person is unfair. It is probably equally fair to have asked why the price was 3 times (?) that of the manufactured costs when it left the factory in China. Its simply a discussion I don't think NZ sales peoeple need to get into for any product.

If you want to buy in US$ do so. That way you can avoid paying the GST NZ'ers have to pay. You can also pay the freight on a 25kg box. The savings you make will cover any issues you have with a guarantee and of course you'll be prepared to flag away your rights under the CGA. Feel free to support US retailers who probably sell 100,000 units (and get a better discount for bulk) and don't worry about the NZ business person stumping up with the readies to try to run a business to satisfy NZ customers. Of course, you'll have no expectation of after-sales servies and support. Commision based minimum wagers are probably doing well having a scant knowledge of product but if you expect them to have an understanding of FX, hedging, customs agents and duties, nz corporate tax rates and employee entitlements (like 8% holiday pay and ACC) then good luck. Some will struggle explaining what region the DVD player they sell plays.

A fairer question might have been "Why are you $X more than Paul Money or JB Hi Fi" down the road!

You sound almost the same as the guy, but they were saying that their buy price was higher than what you could fly to singapore and buy one for combined, and then implied that the singapore ones were inferior, that they would break down and I would be out of pocket etc.

The fact remains I could have bought 2 off the parallel importers on trademe at the time for less than one off EHF, doesnt get much better support wise than having a swappable spare ready to go. It was more than one person at EHF I asked about it. As they were the importer too there was no excuse blaming the supplier IMO.

Add to that their aggressive push on the audioenz forums to have threads about it deleted and posted warned about it and I found them to be the king of arrogance.

After the recent brand merrygoround that saw them nolonger doing denon they seemed to be doing better on onkyo stuff, but still well more expensive than it should be.

Richard rich.ms

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#290334 15-Jan-2010 14:34

The fact still remains (as minimoke pointed out) as a business EHF had overheads - which someone parallel importing does not have (or pretty close to not having) - wages, rates, electricity, rent, advertising, and all the rest of it - none of which are free.

To compare apples with apples you need to compare their prices to other shopfront retailers, not parallel imports and trademe sales. Having never dealt with them I can't comment on an "apples with apples" comparison with EHF, but it maybe your comments about price are fair, but not if you are only comparing them to trademe and parallel import prices. It would cost EHF more to land them in NZ also as they'd be paying taxes and duties on every unit landed.

As for arrogance - that may well be true, but it didn't affect their prices expect maybe through supply and demand. :)

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#290347 15-Jan-2010 15:27

keewee01: To compare apples with apples you need to compare their prices to other shopfront retailers, not parallel imports and trademe sales.

To be honest you really only need to compare the price that you pay and the "total package" that you get for that price (meaning not just the goods but after-sales service, consumer protection etc). Sometimes a higher price is better value because of the value of the total package that you get, but that becomes less and less likely as the price gap gets greater.

Only making comparison with other shopfront retailers is getting rather dated. Online retailers of books, CDs and DVDs and increasingly (outside of New Zealand at least) of electronic goods provide a perfectly acceptable alternative to the shopfront retailers.

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#290353 15-Jan-2010 15:46

Deev8:
keewee01: To compare apples with apples you need to compare their prices to other shopfront retailers, not parallel imports and trademe sales.

To be honest you really only need to compare the price that you pay and the "total package" that you get for that price (meaning not just the goods but after-sales service, consumer protection etc). Sometimes a higher price is better value because of the value of the total package that you get, but that becomes less and less likely as the price gap gets greater.

Only making comparison with other shopfront retailers is getting rather dated. Online retailers of books, CDs and DVDs and increasingly (outside of New Zealand at least) of electronic goods provide a perfectly acceptable alternative to the shopfront retailers.

Good point.

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minimoke

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#290358 15-Jan-2010 16:20

..... but they were saying that their buy price was higher than what you could fly to singapore and buy one for combined, ....

I guess thats why I couldn't be a salesperson in a hifi shop - what with trying to convert $US into Singapore dollars and then into $NZ when a customer asked my to justify my price. I kinda figure its about Product + Price + Service: which you don't necessarily have to get from a high street store.

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#290595 16-Jan-2010 19:44

Well, this is interesting. I went in today with my sister because she was looking for an iPod dockable system with remote and radio etc for the bedroom.

They had nothing suitable but the guys that were there were really really helpful, agreeing that their products available are not really relevent to what younger people want these days (come on, it was normally $900 and it only reads CD's - who the hell burns CDs these days)

My friend got a dvd player for $300 (denon one) - I find that funny to spend that much on something to play a dieing format, but the funnier thing was that despite the manual and remote being new, the box had been opened on the bottom (so he didn't notice) and the player was obviously used - and faulty...

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mentalinc

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#292404 23-Jan-2010 08:07

Receivership Sale on @ Newmarket store ends this Saturday & Sunday. 10am?4pm. Last chance!
http://twitter.com/EasternHiFi

CPU: AMD 5900x | RAM: GSKILL Trident Z Neo RGB F4-3600C16D-32GTZNC-32-GB | MB: Asus X570-E | GFX: EVGA FTW3 Ultra RTX 3080Ti| Monitor: LG 27GL850-B 2560x1440

Quic: https://account.quic.nz/refer/473833 R473833EQKIBX

geekiegeek

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#292436 23-Jan-2010 10:18

richms: Well, this is interesting. I went in today with my sister because she was looking for an iPod dockable system with remote and radio etc for the bedroom.

They had nothing suitable but the guys that were there were really really helpful, agreeing that their products available are not really relevent to what younger people want these days (come on, it was normally $900 and it only reads CD's - who the hell burns CDs these days)

My friend got a dvd player for $300 (denon one) - I find that funny to spend that much on something to play a dieing format, but the funnier thing was that despite the manual and remote being new, the box had been opened on the bottom (so he didn't notice) and the player was obviously used - and faulty...

mp3 = loss of sound quality
CD = full sound quality

CD is here to stay for sometime yet if you like to hear music the way it was recorded instead of missing a whole lot of the midrange. For digital storage rip to FLAC or ALAC (Can still be used on ipod) lossless codecs. Until you can buy lossless encodes easily I'll be buying CD's and ripping them myself.

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#292559 23-Jan-2010 19:57

Dissapointing, I always found the staff in the Wairau Road EHF branch genuine and helpful when it came to all things Hifi, plus quality gear. I knew somwthing was wrong when the Denon brand suddenly disappeared. This has to be a real loss and concern for Hi fi enthusiasts = less competition.

As far as pricing goes, they were always negotiable. Who pays the advertised price anyway these days?. Always offer 20% less than the ticket and go from there. You can guarantee they will take accept at least 10% discount and that goes for any shop, EHF were no different. A real loss for the consumer.

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richms

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#292611 24-Jan-2010 02:42

geekiegeek:
richms: Well, this is interesting. I went in today with my sister because she was looking for an iPod dockable system with remote and radio etc for the bedroom.

They had nothing suitable but the guys that were there were really really helpful, agreeing that their products available are not really relevent to what younger people want these days (come on, it was normally $900 and it only reads CD's - who the hell burns CDs these days)

My friend got a dvd player for $300 (denon one) - I find that funny to spend that much on something to play a dieing format, but the funnier thing was that despite the manual and remote being new, the box had been opened on the bottom (so he didn't notice) and the player was obviously used - and faulty...

mp3 = loss of sound quality
CD = full sound quality

CD is here to stay for sometime yet if you like to hear music the way it was recorded instead of missing a whole lot of the midrange. For digital storage rip to FLAC or ALAC (Can still be used on ipod) lossless codecs. Until you can buy lossless encodes easily I'll be buying CD's and ripping them myself.

I was refering to burning discs - its stupid to burn a CD when a DVD-R costs the same and holds more, and is more reliable.

Seems that home audio is stuck in the past like car audio - its just a medium for holding files, I dont see why they still put CD drives in things. A $30 home DVD player will do DVDs with audio files on them, no exuse for something 15 times the price to only read cdrom's.

I cant hear any difference in things done in V0 MP3 - I still download the flac because I can hear the difference in a he-aac encode from mp3 vs one from lossless sometimes, and I encode to he-aac to put on the computer and when I had a phone.

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#292738 24-Jan-2010 20:27

Malpaso:As far as pricing goes, they were always negotiable. Who pays the advertised price anyway these days?. Always offer 20% less than the ticket and go from there. You can guarantee they will take accept at least 10% discount and that goes for any shop, EHF were no different. A real loss for the consumer.

It's disappointing to say that we may see other stores go under in the not to distant future.

The 'big boys' are playing the grab market share game. To do so, they're dropping prices further and further, and in doing so cutting their margins. This means we're seeing quite a few things.
1: Sweet deals for consumers!
2: Sales people make less money - this means more staff churn and less of a knowledge base in-store.
3: The small stores can't afford to play, so get out of the market, or fall over.
4: Once the small players fall over, the 'big guys' are left with a large chunk of the market and take advantage of the situation to profit take... And who can blame them? They've cut profits (dispite increasing sales + a logical increase in rebates from suppliers) so it's time to make them back! All of which means that we, the consumer, end up losing again.

It's an ever changing landscape...

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#292744 24-Jan-2010 20:54

I dont see the relevance of sales staff anymore. Perhaps in the dark old days of the 80s when you only had advertiser influenced magazines to get information from, but now that there are sites like this, reviews all over the net from less biased people and easy to get manuals and spec sheets for anything, I dont see the value in sales people other than to suggest alternative products that are in stock (a failure of most retailers to actually carry a decent range) or to bargain with (a failure of the current obsession people have with paying the ticket price and putting it on "interest free" finance)

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#292745 24-Jan-2010 21:06

Dunnersfella:
Malpaso:As far as pricing goes, they were always negotiable. Who pays the advertised price anyway these days?. Always offer 20% less than the ticket and go from there. You can guarantee they will take accept at least 10% discount and that goes for any shop, EHF were no different. A real loss for the consumer.

It's disappointing to say that we may see other stores go under in the not to distant future.

The 'big boys' are playing the grab market share game. To do so, they're dropping prices further and further, and in doing so cutting their margins. This means we're seeing quite a few things.
1: Sweet deals for consumers!
2: Sales people make less money - this means more staff churn and less of a knowledge base in-store.
3: The small stores can't afford to play, so get out of the market, or fall over.
4: Once the small players fall over, the 'big guys' are left with a large chunk of the market and take advantage of the situation to profit take... And who can blame them? They've cut profits (dispite increasing sales + a logical increase in rebates from suppliers) so it's time to make them back! All of which means that we, the consumer, end up losing again.

It's an ever changing landscape...

You could argue this is market enonomics in a truely competitive environment.

If the big guys are charging too much there will be opportunities for others to enter the marketplace and the cycle starts over again.

If companies didn't go bust you could argue it would be a failure of a true market economy.

The market for electrical goods is very diverse - Noel Leeming has been performing exceptionally poorly for several years now and required a $15 million capital injection last year to stay afloat. Right now they're not even making enough to pay off the interest on their loans!

JB HiFi on the other hand is making so much money they hardly know what to do with it.

The problem with many retailers is that they have no idea who their core customers are, or if they do they focus on a sector of that market that is so small it's not viable to be servicing those customers. Eastern didn't know quite where they fitted and in the end you could argue they focussed on the mid to high end of the market selling products to a niche sector of the market in a recession. That's fail material.

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