We picked up on an interesting article this week being as we’re a bit geeky and watch the tech news that Dixons Carphone, better known to we peasants as Currys, wants to take on Amazon and it has a plan.
Here’s the thing about Amazon, it’s a real pain for a number of retailers as they operate on very low margins and sometimes apparently pretty much no margin at all. Stack them virtually high, sell them cheap as you can.
Great news for consumers maybe with items that they don’t need any support or service on but, not so good where it’s products that do.
The new supreme leader at Dixons has come up with a plan to “redefine retail” by offering a pay-monthly type scheme that covers customers for everything.
Now call us old-fashioned (many do but just stop it eh?) but that to us sounds an awful lot like the dreaded “rental” of old.
Rental os TV’s washing machines and more dies with the advent of ever cheaper products as, why would you pay say £19.99 a month for something even with an all encompassing warranty on it when you can outright buy it for £200 and just take your chances? Let’s face it, if you get more than ten months out it you’ve won and, it’s still in warranty to boot so, no worries.
“Is there a new retail paradigm?” said Deb James speaking with Retail Week. “Are customers, particularly younger ones, thinking less about ownership and more about usage?”
“If it’s true, it’s my job to ask: how we can be at the forefront of it? And people laugh at me but: how can we end up making Amazon redundant?”
What Mr James is looking for is to his company to do the things it can do that Amazon can’t.
“We can both stock and sell and deliver goods. But I can install. I can protect. I can finance. I manage reverse logistics. I can trade in. I can re-sell.
“If I bundle all that together into a package that includes connectivity, content and everything else, can I do something Amazon will never be able to? I think the answer is yes.”
Repairs
This is what piqued out interest, obviously.
Mr James also told Retail Week that “Our repair proposition will change dramatically, and KnowHow will be totally rebadged and rebranded”.
Quite what that means we’re not so sure but there’s been rumours for years that Currys wasn’t getting on so well with in-home repairs and especially large appliances and might look at dropping it. With this notion of a modern rental type affair we wouldn’t think that dropping service would be on the table any longer as it would be needed we think if Dixons go down this route.
