One of the most frustrating things about living in London was the supermarkets' reliance on Just In Time goods delivery, which more often than not ended up being Just Too Late. Rocking up to the Tesco in Kennington up the road from our house after work you'd find acres of empty produce trays and empty shelves. If you asked staff, they explained there is no store room and there would be no new stock until the next truck arrived. Of course the giant retailers had long killed the little corner stores where you might pick up a carton of milk or a loaf of bread, so you were stuck. London truly is a 3 day truck driver strike away from food riots.
Bunnings have brought this model to the hardware market in Australia, only with a twist that makes it far, far worse.
I've been trying to get the pieces together to repair our screen door and build a new fly screen. For this I need the edge aluminium extrusions in white, corner connectors, cross beam connectors, screen and the spline. You'd think you should be able to pick up these components in one place. Wrong.
I've tried my local Bunnings twice in the past month and each time they've had none of the corner pieces, just empty boxes. They don't even seem to have a place for the cross beam component, and availability of the extrusions in white has been hit and miss.
So I took a day off work to get there and see if I could find them. The photos above show the results. Nothing. The shelves are like Soviet Russia. The staff, when I can track them down, tell me the stock is replaced by reps from the supplier! So not only are they using a Just Too Late model with no storerooms, they let someone else handle the supply chain. Ridiculous.
I ended up going to the other Bunnings up the road with the same result. Finally I went to Mitre 10 in Newtown and managed to get what I need, along with some helpful advice from the knowledgeable staff. Unfortunately their product range is more limited, but at least they keep the stores filled!
Roll on Masters. I'm not keen on monopolists getting in, but this is a monopolized market already and could use some disruption. If there's one thing you never see in a Woolworths, it's row after row of empty shelves. These people can manage a supply chain. Now hurry up and open a Masters in the inner city of Sydney already!