Town slings off at Woolies and Goliath stumbles
14/10/06
IT IS the town that has turned its back on Australia's biggest
retailer. In April, Woolworths overcame community opposition in
Maleny, on Queensland's Sunshine Coast, to open one of its food
barns there.
End of story? Not quite. For although the power of the
Queensland police, threats of legal action against protesters, and
the financial power of big retail asserted the right of Woolies to
enter Maleny, no power on earth, it seems, can force the majority
of the town's residents to enter the supermarket.
Six months after it opened, Woolies' capacious bunker crouches
on the banks of Obi Obi Creek but is eerily empty of shoppers. When
the Herald visited on a recent weekday morning staff
outnumbered customers and a lone checkout counter functioned only
intermittently.
The shelves were full, but the aisles were empty, and the car
park resembled a graveyard.
The same morning, just up the road at the Independent Grocers
Association supermarket, electronic cash registers at no less than
five checkout counters beeped non-stop as staff struggled to keep
pace with demand.
Last year's battle for Maleny, it appears, was only the first
round in a longer war that - so far at least - Woolworths is
losing.
In recent years sprawling suburban developments along the
Sunshine Coast have forced those in search of a more bucolic
lifestyle into the hills around the Glasshouse Mountains.
Maleny, once a rural service town, then a hippie hideaway, is
today both a bastion of the co-operatives movement and a
prosperous, middle-class town of 4000 people. Dairy farmers in
Irwin-style shorts and Country Women's Association members mingle
easily with tree-changers, who have flocked to the town.
Media coverage of last year's protests focused on scores of
police battling the telegenic antics of dreadlocked, new-age
protesters who said Woolies' plans threatened the local platypus
habitat.
Steven Lang, a writer and local businessman who supports the
campaign, said "the hippie element was always a minority" - and so
it seems.
Typical of the resistance is Kim Straker, 59, a mother of two
who, like her husband Jim, is a former Australian Defence Force
member. "They probably thought the opposition was just going to
fade away - but if so, they misjudged the people of Maleny," she
said.
"Our aim is to make this store the most unprofitable Woolworths
in Australia."
So angry are some residents that they have begun returning all
unsolicited advertising material from Woolworths to the company's
reply-paid address. It has resulted in more than 90,000 flyers
being mailed back in the past year, costing the company at least
$50,000, its opponents say.
Others have taken to entering Woolies stores across Australia,
filling up trolleys with non-perishable items, then leaving without
buying anything. That tactic is said to cost the company $14.50 in
labour costs per trolley to return the items to the shelves.
Queenslanders can be formidable when riled, but the most
powerful thing the people of Maleny have done is to simply shop
elsewhere, and they have been doing so in droves.
The IGA's owner, Rob Outridge, can't believe his luck. When
Woolworths opened, he budgeted for a 25 per cent fall in turnover.
Six months later the hit is just 5 per cent, and he is preparing to
kick his rival while it is down by doubling his store's size.
IGA is playing up the local hero tag for all it is worth,
contributing 1 per cent of turnover to local causes, from animal
rescue to the fire brigade.
"Woolworths is big enough to sustain losses for years," Mr
Outridge conceded, "but what's astonishing is the way the community
has expressed its feelings. Woolworths would be bleeding money in
Maleny."
If so, it is not admitting it. Woolworths' Maleny manager, David
Halliwell, referred inquiries to the company's corporate head
office in Sydney. "We're really happy with how the store is
trading," said a spokeswoman, Clare Buchanan.
"There is absolutely no problem with the store, and it's not
trading at a loss. Woolworths is not in business to trade at a
loss."
"Utter rubbish," Mr Lang said. "We suspect they're doing no more
than a tenth of the business they need to do to turn a profit."
The nationwide success of Woolworths' business model is
undoubted, but the struggle for Maleny suggests not everyone in
Australia is resigned to life inside the malls of big retail.
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