It had been brought to my attention that western canadian CE retailer Visions saw an increase in their top line revenue for fiscal 2006 of $50 million.
This of course comes as a complete surprise to any retail analyst who has ever been in one of their stores, which are often described as three steps below Best Buy and one step above XS Cargo for cleanliness, merchandising, and the absence of vacuum cleaners or dust cloths in their store expense budget.
No one at Visions' head office elected to comment, but the question remains, is this growth in their business due to their business plan, the impact of the prairie oil boom on disposable income, or are they gaining business at the expense of a competitor?
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3 comments:
How very kind of you not to include a later "restatement of earnings" as one of the possibilities.
Interesting. How much of that is actual profit, though? They've been the most price-agressive lately, in Calgary at least, so unless they were selling a ton of cables and warranty with every TV deal, they couldn't have actually made much.
As a competitor, I used to think of Soundsaround as being reliably the absolute lowest in town (or at least they're usually willing to be the lowest), but now it's always Visions. The best example was the Big Four event last year, which was started by Soundsaround years ago. Everybody else now has their own similar sale to compete over that weekend, but last year we found that it was people coming in with Visions flyers, not Soundsaround ones, asking to price match.
Anonymous 8:25, don't think that possibility didn't occur to me. However, Visions is still privately held, so the only people they would be fooling are themselves.
No, this was someone on the inside boasting about the big boost they saw in business last year.
Anonymous 10:17, your guess is as good as mine. I would say however that Visions is working hard to evolve their business (they may even start vacuuming regularly), and I would say that if they aren't successfully attachment selling, they won't be around long living off of video margins and volume rebates.
I guess that we're going to have to wait and see.
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