OPINION: The crash of the Harvey Norman website on the busiest day of the year could have serious ramifications for the big retailer whose latest financials reveal that the business was already struggling from a downturn in business prior to the Black Friday sales.
What’s not known is whether the attitude of Chairman Gerry Harvey has contributed to the crash through the lack of invest in online infrastructure.
Currently visitors to the site, which has been down for several hours, are being told ‘Keep this page open and it will automatically refresh when your turn comes’.
The only problem is that there are tens of thousands in the queue with most people moving on to other retailer’s web sites including JB Hi Fi, Bing Lee, The Good Guys and the likes of Big W, Kmart and Amazon that are all offering Black Friday deals.
And if a visitor does manage to get in, they are being told that ‘Once you’re in, you’ll have 10 minutes to access the website”.
Observers claim this is a “disaster” for the big retailer.
“It could not have come at a worse time,” said the CEO of a major mobile brand who invested marketing dollars with the retailer in the hope of getting increased business during the Black Friday sales.
The business that is a key partner of Optus has also not said whether their online operation is running on Optus or Singtel servers.
The ASX-listed retailer recently revealed that its net profit for fiscal 2023 had slumped by a third to $539.5 million and that sales at their franchised stores were down 13.9%.
Back in 2000, Gerry Harvey who is no fan of online retailing told ninemsn “that most of the online business will be conducted by traditional retailers and that over 90% of the e-retailers will in fact all go out of business one after the other”.
This did not happen.
In 2008 Gerry Harvey bagged out claims that that retail juggernaut Amazon would eat into Harvey Norman’s position in the market as being overblown.
Recently analysts Ben Gilbert, who heads the Jarden research team predicted that Amazon would reach $5.5 billion in Australian turnover next financial year and will keep thriving as more shoppers seek better value for money.
“Amazon is maintaining momentum in a slowing market, taking greater than 10 per cent of incremental sales excluding food.
Earlier this year ChannelNews reported that Amazon Australia bucked the online marketplace downturn to deliver a 48 per cent jump in sales as Harvey Norman sales fell.
According to accounts filed with ASIC, Amazon Commercial Services posted sales of $2.63 billion during the calendar year 2022, up 47.7 per cent from 2021’s $1.78 billion.
Not surprisingly, Amazon’s online store accounted for most of this, with net sales of $1.29 billion, up from $883.3 million.
Third-party marketplace revenue rose to $316.9 from 181.7 million – representing commission revenue only.
In 2008, he famously told Smart Company that online retailing “is a complete waste of time”.
Recently he was still bagging out online retailers claiming his competitive position could only improve as online-only retailers struggled in the post-COVID period.
“You look at those online players that were going to take all the business – they are going out of business day by day, across the world,” he said last month. 
