Miele PR Consultant Anne Tesch confirmed exclusively to ChannelNews on Tuesday night at a Miele PR event that “between 20 and 30 Miele staff had been sacked.
Later today Miele Managing Director Michael Jeanes tried to spin the situation into what Tesch claimed was a “positive” situation for Miele when he announced that the real numbers were not between 20 and 30 but 33.
Sacked Miele staff who have contacted ChannelNews claim the news is “far from positive”.
Miele whose products are coming under serious threat from brands such as LG, Samsung and Panasonic have admitted that their Australian business is declining.
What Miele is claiming is that the sackings are part of “An organisational change”. That will “provide better support to retailers”.
These are the same retailers who range Miele products in their stores but are not allowed to lower the cost of a Miele product. What retailers have to do is hand over the customers details and order to Miele, who not only supply the product but control pricing.
Jeanes claims “This restructure will enable Miele to deliver more support on the shop floor during high consumer traffic periods, for instance weekend trading”.
Jeanes added: “In order for Miele to maintain our position as the Brand of Choice and a leading supplier of domestic appliances, we must win the battle for sales that is being fought out on the retail floor.”
Jeanes believes the winning brands will be those able to deliver a seamless execution of strategy at point of sale.
“From a retail perspective, this is the consequence of wide scale point-of-sale closures, mergers and acquisitions as never before seen in Australia” he added.
The new program will fall under the management of Miele Sales Director, David Woollcott, Account management will be run by Owen Holbourn and Cameron Stow.
Similar to what Panasonic did under the management of Steve Rust the former CEO Miele has hired the services of an external marketing and sales agency.
His new external contractor, Demoplus deliver in-store merchandising face to face contact with retailers, sales management and marketing support.
12 months after Panasonic moved to the external model they started to cut back on the contact service claiming the model “did not work”.
Jeanes said that by spending the money through Demoplus Miele can increase its people in the field more than 50 per cent.
Miele has chosen not to answer questions about allegations that they are controlling pricing via their agreements with mass retailers.
What ChannelNews has been told is that customers are turning away from Miele products and that the upcoming launch of several new appliance products by Samsung and LG along with several other brands is set to hurt Miele sales.
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