Harvey Norman has restructured their appliance business with several major brands losing floor space, replaced by several new brands.
One major winner is Hitachi whose premium range of refrigerators has been expanded to over a 70 additional Harvey Norman stores.
According to Harvey Norman insiders the big losers are Samsung, Electrolux and LG Electronics as well as several Chinese who have seen their range reduced.
ChannelNews understands that the move is aimed at growing revenue from premium brands such as Hitachi, who are witnessing record sales of their premium made in Japan refrigerators that retail for $5,999.
One Harvey Norman franchisee said, “Management came to the conclusion that several brands had models on the floor, that were very similar and that by reducing ranging they could add new models, that had been trialled in a small number of other Harvey Norman stores into the mix, of appliance products across the network.”
“A classic example was Samsung’s range of French door fridges, with several of their models featuring only variants of a top end model and did need to take up additional floor space, LG Electronics also had models that were very similar”
A spokesperson at Hitachi said, “We can confirm that Harvey Norman is expanding our premium refrigerator offering in their stores and we welcome this move. The Hitachi range of refrigerators are built around preserving food the top end range which is sold at both Bing Lee and Harvey Norman, is proving popular which is why we believe Harvey Norman has expanded the range across their network to more than 70 stores”.
“Australians actually throw out millions of dollars-worth of food in particular fresh food every year, What Harvey Norman is now offering is a top end refrigerator that actually puts fresh food to sleep via a new gas and vacuum seal system this not only preserves food it actually lengthens the life of food”.
Another plus is the 10 year warranty.
Harvey Norman have not commented about their restructure.
