Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

New sweat shops to spend our spare cash

Just in time for Christmas we've had a new barn style shopping estate open nearby – about two km east of here as the crow flies. It's located near the junction of Leach Highway and Norma Road Myaree on the site which used to host the Kleenheat Gas conglomerate - a dangerous looking eyesore if ever there was one.

When Kleenheat went there was a complete redevelopment of the huge site. This has been going on over the past year. The urban rumour was that Ikea were going to move in. Apparently they did consider the proposals, but the ginormous concrete-slab barns were too small for their needs. Well, that's what was told to me by a sales person in one of the other businesses which have seized the opportunity.

Four go-getters opened their local doors for the first time last Saturday. Apparently the precinct was akin to hell on earth because of the crowds. One of the businesses BCF which specialises in boating, camping and fishing, had conducted a substantial TV advertising campaign which paid off. I think I saw a promotion from one of the others on TV too – JB Hi-Fi. Two other early runners were Kitchen Warehouse and the Chinese-trinket merchandiser Things. Several other business were endeavouring to complete their setting up yesterday and hadn't opened. They didn't look very exciting to me.

The BCF operation has an enormous display of everything needed to bring most edible species of fish to the brink of extinction. Lures, hooks, brand-name rods and reels, they've got 'em on display by the truckload at discount prices. And there seemed to be plenty of quality camping gear as well. There were a lot of people wandering about on an an initial inspection tour like us. I suspect they will get a lot of patronage from the fish killers.

The other operation which was doing really well was JB Hi Fi.
They have an outlet in central Perth which is a year-round frenetic hell-hole of rampant consumerism. I mentioned a visit to this business last year - on 9 November 2005. I notice that I had mistakenly called them "JDs."

They are still flat out flogging CDs and DVDs all day long. It must be an awful place to work because there is no respite from the pressure and stench of seething humanity. Great for the owners' profits though. Actually the company is listed on the Australian stock exchange. Now might be the time to buy some shares. The formula for success seems to be to fill the shop which every title they can lay their hands on an give the punters a slight break on prices. Easy. We eager shoppers do the rest.

The new branch was no different yesterday. Yet another frenetic hell-hole of rampant consumerism. The place was choc-full of eager but sweaty customers - big spending sweaty customers. I was reminded of the opening day of the state's first Kmart in nearby Kardinya. That must have been about 25 years ago. Chaos! Clearly people still have plenty of money to spend, and they know what they want to spend it on - CDs and DVDs.

Unrestrained, I even bought a couple of CDs for under ten bucks each. Essentials by Philip Glass and Reprise by Vangelis. My wife bought a DVD of the cute movie Footrot Flats.

One area of this JB Hi Fi clone is not well thought out. That's how to most efficiently take the customers' money. They have a central area for payments which doubles as the admin. area. It's a truly hopeless arrangement. We had to wait five minutes to pay, and there was only one person in front of us. Then the sales guy forgot to put one of our CDs in the bag before it was sealed. It was lucky I noticed. They need to have a supermarket style checkout.

As we were leaving we spied a small table of bargain CDs. I suspect they might have been connected with the advertising campaign. "CDs from a dollar..." sort of thing. Pretty well no one was looking at them. Well we paused, and realised that there were a lot of classic jazz titles for 99 cents. Even cheaper than a dollar.

We began picking them out. We know from being more observant than most people for bargains that you have to be quick off the mark with these sort of things. People begin to notice when we are quietly giving extra attention to something and soon a feeding frenzy starts. Well, we managed to pluck out thirty two individual 99 cent jazz titles yesterday before we were satisfied. Sure enough, others had noticed us towards the end of our operation and started to elbow their way in, but they were too late. We reckon maybe three quarters of what we plucked out were one-offs. We had scooped the pool. but we then had to endure the agony of paying at JB's ill-designed admin. counter.

We also visited the Kitchen Warehouse. Very nice, but the prices seemed high. There are several kitchen gadget operators at nearby Garden City, which is still a more interesting place to visit. Plus Garden City has air conditioning which works. All the retail setups in the new precinct seemed to have evaporative air conditioning units. These are absolutely hopeless when the humidity is up, like it was yesterday. Hence the stench of so many sweating customers.

© MMVI Paul R. Weaver.

About the writer

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write a couple of million words.

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