Oh nails, that's just sad...even for you....
Taking the company public is normal for almost every company...And it's NOT 'asking for public money'....it's offering to allow the public to share in the company profits..Totally different idea...
Looks like shrewd old Gerry is using online sellers as his punching bag for an otherwise poor share price
Poor Gerry Harvey - tell him he's dreamingDate: November 24 2010
Michael Pascoe
Poor little Gerry Harvey says he can't make a profit selling televisions. Well don't then. Scratch any red-blooded free-market-loving capitalist and you'll find someone who either wants a monopoly or government assistance.
And as for those damned sneaky little consumers daring to circumvent rapacious landlords, retailers' mark-ups and a little GST by shopping overseas on the internet, the Harvey Norman boss wants the ATO to crack down on them before they irrevocably destroy the fabric of Australian society. Oh Gerry, if I didn't know you better, I'd think you'd lost the plot.
Meanwhile it's a sad commentary on how Canberra seems to be driven by populist media rather than policy that Assistant Treasurer Bill Shorten even entertains having “to work something out to see if it's administratively feasible” and flip-flops on whether he meant it.
In an age of bland, lawyer-vetted CEOs, Gerry Harvey is a journalist's dream, being both colourful and bold. Gerry's prepared to have a crack and can normally be relied on for a pithy quote or ten. He's always been a likable character – at least if you're not in business against him.
He's also been very good value for his shareholders over the years. Unlike the Murdochs and Lowys, for example, Gerry relies on his dominant shareholding to generate his wealth rather than paying himself an eye-watering salary to cover minimal dividends or poor performance.
And Gerry Harvey has always had a genuine gift for PR as the face of Harvey Norman, right from the early days of the “we're gonna beat ya” battle with Alan Bond's Waltons after the takeover of Norman Ross.
So blasting internet shoppers is a lot more fun than just concentrating on the Harvey Norman share price being pretty much where it was five years ago, paying too much for Clive Peeters, explaining international excursions that range from not great to terrible, facing up to the painful competition from JB Hi-Fi and dealing with a lull in consumer demand. Yep, let's talk about GST – even though Gerry admits the international internet stuff doesn't really have much direct impact on Harvey Norman.
Never mind that there's plenty of nonsense around about internet shopping and little in the way of hard figures beyond the surge in Australia Post deliveries as our dollar soared. Would you trust Australian retailers' guesstimate of international internet shopping when they're pushing their own protectionist barrow? No, I wouldn't either.
The rational approach taken by the Australian Tax Office is that trying to collect GST on internet purchases of under $1000 isn't worth the candle and the dollar-induced surge.
Besides, if you've tried your hand at internet retailing, you'd know shipping costs on most things tend to at least balance out the GST factor. And most shoppers are blowing another couple of percent on PayPal or credit card foreign exchange fees. What getting on the web or travelling overseas indicates is that there are a pile of other factors that just might be making shopping elsewhere cheaper.
In a relatively few categories – books, most obviously – Australian consumers pay a protectionism premium. (And for books it can be a large premium for the sake of the rent-seeking by the mainly foreign-owned publishers and a handful of high-profile authors who managed to attract Canberra's sympathy.)
More broadly, shopping on the net can be cheaper because it potentially circumvents a host of middlemen and infrastructure costs – whether the virtual store is foreign or local.
Our biggest retailers are themselves pushing further up the supply chain, seeking to cut out importers by dealing directly with foreign manufacturers. After a couple of hundred years of approved importers doing nicely out of their franchises, their rent-seeking is being steadily eroded. Bad luck for them, good luck for everyone else.
A bigger problem then for Australian retailers then is their real estate expense. An efficient internet retailer doesn't have the costs of a High Street shop to maintain – or Westfield's typically ruthless rent increases to absorb. There is nothing for Australia to be proud about in having some of the world's most expensive retail space.
While there's no end of focus on residential real estate, retail is priced even more wildly with landlords having an expectation of ever-increasing rent that often has little reference to business conditions. From the malls to the suburban strips, it's more likely to be the rent that sends a shop broke than a few internet shoppers avoiding GST.
In a broader and more rational market, equilibrium is reached between internet and High Street shopping. Amazon, despite having no shop front costs, hasn't wiped out America's book shops, but it has made them better.......
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Gerry Harvey Calls For GST On Online Purchases. (Read 8607 times)
