Birtles shouldered any concerns about profit margins. “We said we will manage the margins, you manage the sales. We allowed them to clear some of the older inventory. That helped to boost sales, and started to clear the stores of old product, and create space for the new, for improved displays, and helped improve with the ‘shopability’ of the stores. That was all the things they want to see their management team doing.” Shopability refers the ease with which consumers can navigate the store, find what they want and pay for it.
Birtles isn’t crowing about the Rebel Group business just yet. He says there is plenty to be done. The executive team decided the Rebel Sports stores looked a bit dated: suitable for a mum to run in and buy shoes for the kids, but not to stay and look at products for herself. The group is trying a new store format in four of its 92 stores and then, depending on consumer reaction, rolling out the changes across the chain.
Until the purchase of Rebel Group, all executives were in the Brisbane headquarters. Rebel is run from Sydney. Birtles has noticed the change: “One of our strengths has been the walking around and have a quite fireside chat to get the things solved, and not escalating them to me.” This is harder to achieve now that some of the team are in a distant office, Birtles notes.
Anyone for fishing?
Eighty five per cent of the customers who walk into the BCS (boating, camping, fishing) are blokes about to go fishing. The tents and camping accessories are a side issue to the main game. Ray’s Outdoors, on the other hand, is about family camping holidays.
But Ray’s has lost its way a bit, Birtle admits. Started in 1958, Ray’s was bought by Super Retail Group in 2010. Birtles wanted to create a clearer differentiation for Ray’s, which has about 50% female customers.
“We are working hard to give it a clear point of difference,” he says. “It will require some store refurbishment.”
The trouble child of the group is the cycle business, where like for like sales declined by 3.2%, and caused losses in the business of $4.5 million before interest and tax.
Leading through change
One key aspect of leadership is consistency, he says. “You should never be inconsistent in the way you deal with people. Team members must understand you and know how you will react. You should always be truthful and that can mean, in some cases, you have say to someone I can’t tell you that piece of information.”
The company has improved its turnover rate – a challenge in the retail sector. It retention of staff is now sitting at 71.5%, up from 59% in 2006.
Birtles says there is “an incredible amount of change” in the retail sector, and this is one of the main challenges of his leadership of the group. “The danger is that you can have a change agenda that is too big, with too many things happening at any one time. We have suffered from that. One of my key learning is to focus on what we need to focus on, and put other things to one side. It is my job to clarify of direction for the team. That is really important.”
