The Market to be sold off by The Warehouse Group after spending at least $12M developing it

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#3208614 20-Mar-2024 14:34

marpada:

Probably they just wanted to increase margins by closing physical stores and cutting-down staff.

In Australia the Wesfarmers group stores (Kmart, Target, Bunnings, OfficeWorks) have a OnePass subscription so you get free shipping and optionally Disney+, similar to Amazon Plus. The free shipping is just too addictive, and once you get your "free-shipping" subscription you cannot avoid buying stuff you don't need.

NZ companies just don't seem to be able to make it over in Oz. So many have tried, including TWH. But Australian companies coming to NZ seem to do pretty well. The market did have free shipping for paid memebers, but it was quite limited and a minimum spend, and didn't apply to all sellers, which IMO was a big problem.

boosacnoodle

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#3208626 20-Mar-2024 15:14

It failed because it was unattractive to retailers.

The commission charged was in the order of 12-20%. Despite this, TheMarket apparently never made a profit.

Retailers had to pay for the freight when someone had their Market Plus whatever it was called subscription which showed to the customer as “free”.

How could retailers possibly make a profit? The fees and expectations were outrageous.

mattwnz

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#3208628 20-Mar-2024 15:20

boosacnoodle: It failed because it was unattractive to retailers.

The commission charged was in the order of 12-20%. Despite this, TheMarket apparently never made a profit.

Retailers had to pay for the freight when someone had their Market Plus whatever it was called subscription which showed to the customer as “free”.

How could retailers possibly make a profit? The fees and expectations were outrageous.

Having a market plus account, I found many of the the 3rd party retailers didn't offer free shipping and also had no ability to pick up either. So were stuck paying the high shipping fees. So it wasn't a great experience for customer if some items were included in the free shipping, and some weren't. I guess in terms of costs for retailers, it isn't much different to being in a shopping mall, and no one is forcing them to be on it.

everettpsycho

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#3208644 20-Mar-2024 15:42

The main benefits were that we found you could get the membership free with a $1 Vodafone Sim card, so we basically used it when it either had 10% off sales or when we needed stuff from the warehouse anyway and could get it delivered for no extra cost.

I got some great deals off the market when it first launched with all its promos as they'd often price match then you could stack 10% more off. Best deal was a Noel Leeming pricing error that they caught on their website but somehow ordering off the market snuck through unnoticed, $2000 of tv for $800... I wonder why they didn't make any money.

richms

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#3208667 20-Mar-2024 17:34

I used it for free delivery of cat litter and other things I didnt want to have to deal with moving in and out of the car to get home.

Even when I had to pay a $7 delivery for 10 or so bags of cat litter, they were all individually ticketed and sent to me from far far away stores. This was because their ineptness meant that there was none in store at Glenfield for me to buy in person.

I would say that they should have put as much effort into keeping stock in store as they did with the market, but really that was not given much effort really.

They bought 1-day and screwed it up and closed it down, they bought and screwed up torpedo 7.

Add it to Jewellery, credit cards, being a supermarket, as another idea the warehouse tried and failed at.

I am so glad that I offloaded my shares that I inherited back when I did because I see the whole company going broke soon. Nothing in store to buy that you cant get stock of and cheaper elsewhere and they seem to F up anything else they touch.

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mattwnz

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#3208792 20-Mar-2024 19:33

richms:

I used it for free delivery of cat litter and other things I didnt want to have to deal with moving in and out of the car to get home.

Even when I had to pay a $7 delivery for 10 or so bags of cat litter, they were all individually ticketed and sent to me from far far away stores. This was because their ineptness meant that there was none in store at Glenfield for me to buy in person.

I recall once ordering things from TWH through the market, such as grocery items, and the order got broken up into multiple boxes, and they sent a single toothbrush in a single big box.

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RustyViewer

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#3208817 20-Mar-2024 19:52

Well, there goes our cheap baked beans. They are pretty good quality for a buck, better than other cheap brands.

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#3208877 20-Mar-2024 21:02

MikeAqua:

I looked at it once. Everything I looked at, I could get cheaper elsewhere. Never went back.

We have scored some great deals over time, but often they were more expensive.

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#3209050 21-Mar-2024 10:34

I've found the market really handy. The search has better results than Amazon/Google. I then go to the retailers own site to buy items which are 99% of the time cheaper.

Latest was items from coffee gear online. The items I wanted didn't show up on Google search but did on The Market.

mattwnz

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#3209172 21-Mar-2024 14:45

They hadn't had coupons for a long time and got rid of referrals too. SO IMO that was a big thing that meant less people using it. The most successful online systems have referrals and affiliate schemes. I don't think the market had an affiliate scheme and that is a major difference with amazon which they were trying to be the NZ version of.

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#3209185 21-Mar-2024 15:22

mattwnz:

They hadn't had coupons for a long time and got rid of referrals too. SO IMO that was a big thing that meant less people using it. The most successful online systems have referrals and affiliate schemes. I don't think the market had an affiliate scheme and that is a major difference with amazon which they were trying to be the NZ version of.

Amazons affiliate only works because of the huge audience base for people using them. Even then it is still region specific so you have to put in-between pages to sort that out or else have uk and us and possibly au links in your video descriptions. Adding the market to that and finding products on it for the fraction of a percent of audience for most creators would not be worth it. Perhaps mainstream media that is local could use it to get revenue from things but they probably already have a sharing agreement with the places they publish articles on.

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#3209415 22-Mar-2024 06:33

Whatever it was, I’ve never even heard of it!

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#3210519 25-Mar-2024 12:28

Geektastic: Whatever it was, I’ve never even heard of it!

It was a shop. On The Line. In the cyber space.

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heavenlywild

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#3210525 25-Mar-2024 12:49

I doubt anyone is going to pay much for it, if any. It was a glorified TradeMe-like product with many merchants you have never heard of. In fact, it's often cheaper to go direct to the merchant's website.

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#3210542 25-Mar-2024 13:16

heavenlywild:

I doubt anyone is going to pay much for it, if any. It was a glorified TradeMe-like product with many merchants you have never heard of. In fact, it's often cheaper to go direct to the merchant's website.

$1 like the sports gear shop?

Richard rich.ms

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