From the pages of Appliance Retailer, on this day in 2010:
Wednesday 6 January 2009
JB Hi-Fi CEO Richard Uechtritz said there was no reason his chain of stores couldn’t improve on a record performance in calendar 2009.
“We are all very happy with our performance over Christmas, it was a bit of a slippery slide at times but it all ended up very good and positive for us,” he said.
“All of the new stores we opened throughout the year have also performed very well and met all of our expectations.”
At the same time, BSR Group general manger Ian Brown said Christmas sales had been down slightly:
“Obviously our strategic positioning of our retail stores in major retail areas and regional areas meant that they experienced quite reasonable sales throughout December,” he said.
“But we didn’t have that same spike the week before Christmas that we had the previous year. This is mainly due to the fact that last year we saw the benefits of Kevin Rudd’s stimulus package come into effect.”
Top of the Australian box office that day was Avatar.
Flash forward:
Richard Uechtritz retired from his position just one month after making these comments and was replaced by his long-serving COO Terry Smart.
Ian Brown stayed on as the boss of the BSR Group until Graeme Cunningham took over in late 2010. Cunningham has since rebranded the store network as Betta Home Living.