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JB CEO talks restructure and redundancies at Clive Anthonys
By Patrick Avenell
JB Hi-Fi CEO Richard Uechtritz has confirmed the closing of a Clive Anthonys warehouse on the Gold Coast. In an interview with Current.com.au, Uechtritz said that an unspecified number of staff were made redundant.
“I’m not too sure on the number of people, but we closed a warehouse, we made some redundancies” he said.
When asked for thinking behind this decision, Uechtritz said that the JB Hi-Fi group, which owns Clive Anthonys were looking at a different model for the brand’s warehousing. Additionally, Uechtritz said that the JB Hi-Fi brand was definitely the most important at this stage, with Clive Anthonys a secondary concern.
“[Clive Anthonys] is a brand that will move forward. We’ve always said to the market that at this stage the main goal is to grow the JB brand.
“In these uncertain economic times, you can see by the performance of a lot of the electrical market, it’s not as strong a format as the home entertainment format, so our money, time and resources are going into JB Hi-Fi.
“As the economy improves, we will certainly be turning our mind to growing Clive Anthonys.”
In additional Clive Anthonys news, Uechtritz reported that the group would be removing the computer games range from the stores.
“We’ll be pulling games out of Clive Anthonys. We’ve got a good games heritage, but we’ve decided after trying it for over a year that games leave a lot to be desired at a destination retailer like Clive Anthonys, and we’re going through the process of pulling games out of Clive Anthonys.”
When asked if he had any regrets over the purchase of the Clive Anthonys brand, Uechtritz was unequivocal.
“No, not at all. It was a fabulous acquisition at the time, it gave us great buying synergies and great intellect, and I’d do it again 10 times over.”
[Wed 10/06/2009 02:59:56]
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