In 2013 ‘Lowest prices are just the beginning…’ was still front and centre on their brand new stores.

But by 2018 they had added a cheeky ‘Our Policy’ disclaimer in front of it.

And then in 2021 they got out the paint brushes.

Painting it over.

Until it was gone.

Turns out the slogan was quietly dropped in early 2020 – from news.com.au.

It’s one of the most well-known and high profile advertising slogans from one of Australia’s most loved retailers – but not for much longer.

Bunnings is quietly pulling the pin on its famous tagline.

“Lowest prices are just the beginning …” is, well, ending. At least for now.

The home improvement giant has confirmed to news.com.au the slogan has been slowly removed from the side of its stores, uniforms and its advertising.

Bunnings confirmed to news.com.au the slogan had vanished from TV screens and the airwaves last month and was progressively being painted over on stores, where it has been seen for 25 years. New stores built since 2018 haven’t sported the tagline.

Footnote

In October 2021 a print advertisement in the Adelaide Advertiser happened to reinstate the ‘Lowest prices are just the beginning’ line.

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Flowers.

And even fruit.

Tracking down the kiosks

These kiosks are permanent structures designed, built, owned and maintained by the City of Melbourne, and fall into four categories.

Flower kiosks:

• Swanston Street, outside the Melbourne Town Hall
• Collins Street, outside the AXA building between Market and William Streets

Newspaper kiosks:

North west corner of Collins and Elizabeth Street.
• South east corner of Elizabeth and Little Bourke Streets.
• South east corner of Elizabeth and Latrobe Streets.
• North east corner of Bourke and Queen Streets.
• Collins Kiosk – north east corner of Collins and King Streets.
• South east corner of Elizabeth and Franklin Streets.
• North east corner of William & Bourke Streets.
• North west corner of Bourke & Swanston Streets.
• Bourke Street, between Swanston and Russell Streets.
• Swanston Street outside Melbourne Central.
• 21 Swanston Street, outside Commonwealth Bank.
• South east corner of Collins and Queen Streets.
• South west Corner of Spring and Collins Streets.
• Bourke Street corner of Harbour Esplanade, Docklands (outside NAB)

Fruit kiosks:

• Swanston Street – corner Collins Street
• Elizabeth Street – corner Bourke Street (outside GPO)
• Collins Street – west of Queen Street
• Elizabeth Street – south of Collins Street
• Bourke Street – west of Elizabeth Street
• corner Collins and Spencer streets – outside the Rialto building.

And newspaper cylinders:

• 260 Collins Street
• 461 Bourke Street
• 205 William Street
• 459 Collins Street
• Spencer Street, opposite Bourke Street

Death

But given that newspapers printed on dead trees are also dying, there is little use for newsstands any more.

Many kiosks looking run down.

Or boarded up.

And so in 2019 the City of Melbourne decided to reclaim the footpath space, and remove nine of the kiosks.

Melbourne nine CBD footpath kiosks will be scrapped before the end of the year.

Two of the kiosks are already gone, and another seven will not have their leases renewed in November.

Councillor Nicolas Frances-Gilley, council transport chairman for the City of Melbourne, told Ross and John the kiosks are being removed due to overcrowding in the city.

“We just really need the space,” he said.

There are nearly a million people using CBD footpaths everyday and that figure is expected to rise to 1.5 million people in 15 years.

“When you put something quite big on the pavement people walk around it and it’s getting people walking in the curb or onto the road and that’s really unsafe,” Cr Frances-Gilley said.

Saying their time was past.

The council’s Street Trading Team Leader Hugh Kilgower said the kiosks, which sell newspapers and small items, had become anachronistic.

“When I was a kid, newspapers were sold at street corners. Council assisted newsagents back in the day with putting structures in place,” he said.

“Over time, the city has changed and evolved and there’s a lot more businesses around – 7-Elevens and supermarkets. The need for those kiosks has changed.”

Mr Kilgower said when the kiosks were installed 30 years ago the city was less active, but now they were creating “bottle necks” for foot traffic. He said this congestion was also a reason for the decision.

Council transport chairman Nicolas Frances Gilley told the Herald Sun the kiosks initially helped activate the city.

“We have great respect for the historical and cultural value of the kiosks, so we have begun reaching out for find new homes for the structures once they are removed,” he said.

Leaving behind fresh patches of asphalt, like this one at Bourke and Queen Street.

Or this concrete plinth at Swanston and Bourke Street.

But one kiosk I’m definitely glad to see gone is the one at Elizabeth and La Trobe Street, which blocked the entrance to Melbourne Central Station.

Today a fence still blocks access to the neighbouring tram stop, but at least the footpath is wider.

And rebirth

But for other kiosks, the City of Melbourne has expanded the range of uses, selecting tenants based on “uniqueness, diversity, experience, capability, past performance track record, customer service, visual presentation, financial, social and environmental sustainability”

This one on Elizabeth Street sells baked goods.

Over on Swanston Street crepes are being freshly cooked.

And down the street hot chocolates are for sale.

While a handful of cylinders have been designed for “pop-up” retail use, like this one selling pot plants.

These five pop-up locations being:

• Adjacent to 236 Swanston Street
• Adjacent to 461 Bourke Street
• Adjacent to 156 Elizabeth Street
• Adjacent to 60 Elizabeth Street
• Spencer Street, west of Bourke Street

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I found four in this row.

A few more here.

And over there.

Outnumbering the cars!

But on the other side was the reason for the trucks – a nondescript loading dock.

The only branding being a big red “Click & Collect” sign the sole doorway, which gives away the owner – Coles!

In June 2016 the Sydney Morning Herald explained the logic behind this ‘secret’ supermarket.

Wesfarmers-owned Coles is testing its first online-only store in inner-city Melbourne as it pushes to drive volumes in online sales, which have jumped 25 per cent this year alone.

Coles boss John Durkan said the chain planned to roll out one or two more of the so-called “dark stores”, which have a dedicated team picking stock for online customers.

Mr Durkan said the idea was to test if Coles could become more efficient in handling online shopping and avoid clogging up the supermarket aisles with the bulky online order trolleys.

The online-only outlet was opened in April at a former Coles site in Richmond, and serves customers living within about five kilometres, taking in some of Melbourne’s most densely populated suburbs.

So what’s inside? Issue 7 of ‘Coles Supply Chain’ magazine had an article on the store.

In April 2016 Coles opened their first-ever stand alone online ‘dark store’ in Richmond South, catering for Coles Online customers living within a five kilometre radius of the store.

Although there are no customers walking the aisles, the store is setup exactly as a normal shop would be and has a team of approximately 150 staff, including more than 50 Customer Service Agents dedicated to delivering orders.

Measuring more than 2650 square metres, the store layout has been specifically designed for increased picking efficiency, with a dedicated cool-room for picking chilled products and a bulk pick area for fast-moving products.

The store has five loading bays, providing the capacity to efficiently fill and dispatch a feet of vans throughout the day.

As well as a photo of the bulk pick area.

Coles photograph

Navigating supermarket aisles is a pain in the arse at the best of times – let alone keeping the shelves faced up! So a dedicated ‘pick and pack’ venue makes a lot of sense for a supermarket chain.

Footnote

In February 2015 the original Coles Supermarket next to East Richmond station was replaced by the current store at ‘Richmond Icon’, which freed up the site for the current ‘dark’ store.

In August 2017 the store was part of a trial where Uber drivers supplemented Coles delivery vans to make same-day deliveries of items that were missing from online orders.

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Can’t tell the difference?

The first advert is for Kmart.

The second is Target.

Go it?

Can’t tell the difference

Turns out even parent company Wesfarmers has trouble, as this 2016 article by Gary Mortimer, senior lecturer at the QUT Business School, explains:

Cannibalisation happens when a company offers a brand, product or service that competes with another within that same company. When this level of internal competition is directly head-to-head, only the strongest will survive. Shoppers and retail commentators have been seeing this play out across the Australian retail landscape with Kmart and Target. Yet, a limited degree of overlap can be a successful strategy if well implemented and where markets are clearly defined.

With increasing disposable incomes and an apparent insatiable desire for superior quality and “luxury for the masses”, mid-tier shoppers originally turned to Target for a range of popular brands at reasonable prices. But times have changed. Economic strains are now causing consumers to trade down, and many mid-tier and premium brands are losing share to low-price rivals.

Today, Kmart is where Target was seven years ago, with Kmart’s first-half earnings in 2016 at $319 million, while Target has slumped to $74 million. Quite simply, Target lost its way and confused its core customer.

When Target is selling $7 kettles and $10 children’s clothing, it is starting to look a lot like Kmart. One of the ways to successfully ensure a good cannibalisation strategy is to ensure a strong brand loyalty to the original business. However, as Target moved further into increasing their range of private label products, brand equity reduced and shoppers migrated to the lower priced alternative, Kmart. Simply shoppers didn’t see the difference between a Kmart t-shirt versus a Target t-shirt.

And in the blue corner

And here is another similar TV commercial from the other side of the fence – Big W.

Target and Kmart both use red in their branding, while Woolworths-owned discount department store Big W uses blue.

Rebranding Target as Kmart

Back his 2016 article Gary Mortimer predicted the two brands would soon merge:

Where you have two very similar businesses, serving the same market, with essentially the same offer; close one. The Kmart model works. Rather than merge, I’d expect Westfarmers department stores CEO Guy Russo to rebrand Target to Kmart.

But instead he decided to convert underperforming Target stores to the Kmart brand. The first such conversion in Victoria was completed at The Pines Shopping Centre in north-eastern Melbourne in December 2016, with Broadmeadows Shopping Centre completed soon after.

And Kmart and Big W cross over

This is from the Sydney Morning Herald in 2015:

Kmart boss Guy Russo has his eyes on at least 50 stores of struggling rival Big W as he hunts for ways to double the size of his department store business and drive revenue to $10 billion.

While Woolworths is considering what to do with its underperforming Big W chain, Wesfarmers-owned Kmart has no designs on the struggling business itself — it’s the leases Mr Russo wants and the Big W employees.

Kmart has reached out to every Big W landlord across the 152 store network and Mr Russo said there were about 50 shops he’d like to convert to Kmart stores.

The cross overs continue.

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Growing up in Geelong there were many examples – the first being two Woolworths supermarkets on Queenscliff Road in Newcomb, Victoria. Only 500 metres separate these two stores, each anchoring a similarly sized shopping centre – the first at Newcomb Central, and the second at Bellarine Village. The latter store was a Franklins store until 2001.

On the other side of Geelong is a pair of Coles Supermarkets on High Street, Belmont. At the bottom of the hill there is a full-line Coles and Kmart anchored shopping centre, with the supermarket 750 metres down the road in the main shopping strip being a former Bi-Lo outlet, rebranded back in 2006.

In Melbourne there are some even more extreme examples of co-located supermarkets. On Hampshire Road in Sunshine there are two Woolworths supermarkets across from each other – one in the Woolworths owned ‘Sunshine Marketplace’ shopping complex, and a second store in the ‘Sunshine Plaza’ complex across the road.

But the two Coles supermarkets in Coburg are the most extreme example, with only the store carpark separating the two outlets!

Located next door to railway station in the main Coburg shopping strip, one of the stores has always been as a Coles, while the other is yet another rebranded Bi-Lo store.

So why would a major supermarket chain decide to keep one store open when they already have a second store right next door?

To find the answer, there are two supermarkets on Geelong’s Shannon Avenue provide a perfect explanation. With only 900 metres separating them, the supermarket at the Newtown end is still owned by Woolworths, but the nearby supermarket in Geelong West is now a Coles outlet.

The story starts when Safeway and Woolworths were still separate companies, with each operating a store on Shannon Avenue.

Both stores continued trading for years, until Woolworths opened a much larger supermarket on nearby Pakington Street in 2008, following much community angst. The northernmost Shannon Avenue store was then closed down, but Coles snatched up the empty building and opened their own supermarket on the site in 2008.

Given their experiences in Geelong West, I’m guessing that for Coles and Woolworths running two adjoining stores for a marginal profit is better than to give up a site (and market share) to the other half of the duopoly!

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