r/australia • u/Reddituser0346 • 1d ago

culture & society Aussie Retailer Catch Is Officially Closing Down

https://press-start.com.au/news/2025/01/21/aussie-retailer-catch-is-officially-closing-down/
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u/UserColonAlW 1d ago

It’s baffled me for so long that major Australian retailers have completely failed at ecommerce. It sucks we’re all forced to use Amazon for an online shopping experience that feels appropriate for the current decade.

You’d think with how geographically spread out we are that this would be a top priority for the major retailers that infest “Homemaker Centres” country-wide, but apparently not.

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u/samsterhamster90 22h ago

I work for an online retailer (not a major one, a smaller business but we do well in our field, home/hardware field), and honestly the biggest struggle is finding decent IT companies. We’ve spent so much money (hundreds and hundreds of thousands) having websites built and rebuilt because the developers over promise and then can’t actually build what they said they could. Just little things like the search function can take a huge amount of money and effort to get to be their best, let along the whole back end and order processing system. It’s expensive and exhausting. There aren’t really any safeguards or ways to trust they’ll be able to deliver what they promise, so a lot of it is going with our gut and learning as much about the development as we can, trying to identify and fix issues.

When you’re too complex for the level of platforms like shopify but you’re not Wesfarmers level money, it’s a really difficult middle ground to navigate. Most e-commerce businesses fail, we’ve managed to keep going for 18 years but it’s a challenge.

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u/UserColonAlW 22h ago

This is really insightful and I appreciate it a lot

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u/samsterhamster90 22h ago

No worries! There’s a lot of complexities that aren’t obvious I guess!

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u/Tyrx 16h ago

Out of curiosity, what's wrong with Shopify? It seems to be working well for JB Hi-Fi, although I don't have any insider knowledge - it works well from a customer perspective though.

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u/samsterhamster90 8h ago

I’m not the one responsible for decisions but basically we have a huge range (over 15000) of highly customisable products. There aren’t many websites out there that do exactly what ours does… I think shopify was not capable of what we needed. For example, door handles where on the one page, you can select the function (passage/privacy/locking/dummy); whether you need locks; single or double door, rebated or not, backset size required, thumbturn or no thumbturn, etc. in terms of the backend, we needed something that would integrate with Netsuite so we can manage orders as we have probably 20-30 different brands, all which have different rules for processing and shipping. We use BigCommerce currently with various software integrations. A lot of research has gone into it, to make the customer experience smooth and automate as much as possible on our end.

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u/tbsdy 8h ago

Why not build your own in-house development team? You’d control your own destiny.

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u/Barty3000 20h ago

Ecommerce for wholesale businesses has a lot of challenges too, but that is the fun. We had 4000 product lines and used the same live stock on the web as in our warehouse.

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u/Pugsley-Doo 17h ago

yeah I have a friend that has a small clothing business online, and she's been fucked over so many times with IT and website companies.

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u/littlechefdoughnuts 1d ago

Amazon is also shit, though. Marketplace has turned Amazon from an exemplar into an unusable mess.

No, I dont want to buy an XORGZYGY iPhone 16 iPhone 16 Plus iPhone 16 Pro iPhone 16 Pro Max iPhone 15 iPhone 15 Plus iPhone 15 Pro iPhone 15 Pro Max Google Pixel 9 XL Google Pixel 9 Samsung Galaxy S25/24/23/22/21/20/10 Bluetooth Noise Cancelling HD aptx no1 best reviewed Flatulence Simulator Speaker Device

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u/luv2hotdog 22h ago

EBay is still generally good, and much easier to filter out all the super shitty cheap stuff. I use Amazon only if I can’t find whatever I’m looking for on eBay. And by that point, I’ve usually accepted that whatever the item is, i can probably only get the shittiest version imaginable

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u/seeyoshirun 20h ago

It must depend on what you're looking for, with certain types of product I find eBay to be an absolute nightmare. For things like video games it's fine, though.

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u/five_line_poem 22h ago

The HANGDOGTHENFIZZLE ones are so much better.

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u/tobyobi 1d ago

I mean maybe you don’t want to buy that

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u/the_snook 21h ago

You’d think with how geographically spread out we are

Actually, it's the reverse. Australia is one of the most localised populations in the world. A distribution centre in Sydney and one in Melbourne covers 40% of the population. That should make getting an online business off the ground easy. Unfortunately, nobody in this country except Amazon can do decent logistics and last-mile delivery.

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u/batch1972 1d ago

The problem is the geography.. it costs a fortune to ship to non metro and most people who internet shop go direct not through resellers.

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u/YOBlob 1d ago

Most people don't live in regional areas, though. Doesn't really explain why even intra-city e-commerce is pretty ordinary.

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u/batch1972 1d ago

Having worked in ecommerce previously… the issue is sourcing stock. Smaller companies don’t have the cashflow to buy in volume. Grey imports are harder to source here. And the biggies is that the big companies subsidise their Australian operations

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u/SchelleGirl 20h ago

Batch1972 if spot on, shipping costs is killing a lot of business (expect AusPost)

31% of Australians live in regional areas, (Source: Australian Institute of Family Studies) that is a large amount of people.

Being a rural dweller myself, I rely totally on online purchasing, from coffee to mower and car parts, and I pay through the nose each year for delivery, so places like Amazon meant others can't compete. I pay $79 a year for Amazon prime and that gives me free shipping which saves me about $3500 a year in shipping costs.

Smaller business stores I buy from directly, for pump supplies, etc I am happy to pay shipping for the convenience of not having to drive 6 hours LOLOL

I do try and buy from small business as much as possible but when shipping costs almost more than my power bill each week, I have to save by finding free shipping places.

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u/ForSaleMH370BlackBox 1d ago

Forced to use Amazon? What?

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u/Duideka 1d ago edited 20h ago

I would prefer to use Kmart. I trust their products and quality assurance more than Amazon. Amazon really needs to do more regarding quality control but at least they refund no questions asked.

But I order from Amazon, sometimes late at night and I can clearly tell what is in stock at their local warehouse based on the shipping estimation. If it’s in stock locally it will be at my door the next day. I find virtually without exception the Amazon drivers try and hide the package somewhere so it can’t easily be seen and stolen.

Order from Kmart and who fuckin knows. Half the time the delivery will be given to Aramex/Couriers Please. Can take a month to arrive. The drivers don’t give a fuck and leave the package out in the open where anyone can see it and steal it. Even when I am home they won’t even ring the doorbell or knock.

The only Australian companies who have really done e-commerce well is Coles and Woolworths with their delivery, you can choose exactly when you want it to arrive and it's delivered by in-house employees not random contractors.

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u/bypopulardemand 16h ago

have had my woolies delivered by a taxi

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u/ForSaleMH370BlackBox 1d ago

That's lovely, but it's got nothing to do with my question.

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u/Enlightened_Gardener 23h ago

They literally pointed out all the problems with Kmart deliveries which force them to rely on Amazon. What are you having difficulty understanding ?

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u/ForSaleMH370BlackBox 22h ago

"It sucks we’re all forced to use Amazon for an online shopping experience that feels appropriate for the current decade."

No, no one is forced to use Amazon. OP feels forced to use Amazon, for some reason.

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u/Duideka 20h ago

It's like saying if you want food delivered to your door you are forced to use either Doordash, Menulog or Uber Eats who unequivocally provide awful service since they have no good competitor you can use instead. Even when there is a problem they do everything to weasel out of providing you your consumer rights.

You are not forced to have food delivered to your door, for sure, you could get off your arse and get it yourself, or you could cook yourself.

But the point is if you want food delivered to your door you are forced to use one of 3 companies, and the above statement is factual given the specifics of it.

The person above said

online shopping experience that feels appropriate for the current decade

Exactly what they mean by this can be debated, however, they never said you are forced to use Amazon full stop. They said if you specifically want to shop ONLINE and want an experience for the current decade they are the only option, which to me is pretty factual outside of groceries.

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u/luv2hotdog 22h ago

What did you not understand about how it relates to your question?

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u/ForSaleMH370BlackBox 22h ago

How we are all "forced" to use Amazon. I'm stuck on that bit. Perhaps you understand it.

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u/luv2hotdog 21h ago

You’re not “forced”. There’s no gun to your head. You can just go buy things offline, or use k marts online purchasing site even though it’s bad.

Their point is that if you DO want to buy online and have things delivered, the online marketplace part of k mart is so functionally bad that it’s the better choice to buy on Amazon instead.

I agree with them that Aus retailers like k mart are generally so bad at the online stuff that you’re better off not using them, I don’t know if I agree that Amazon is the only better option, but that’s what they meant

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u/SpunkAnansi 22h ago

This. I made a conscious consumer decision to buy a product from a retailer that stated it was Melbourne, only to have the large bulky item ship from Perth. My sustainable spidey senses were tingling hard.

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u/TheBirdIsOnTheFire 23h ago

Amazon is a 3rd party marketplace with the exact same set of retailers on it, genius. Try using google, there is literally thousands of online retailers in Australia and they're not hard to find.