Jeremy Senior the former Vice President of Samsung’s Consumer Electronics division is back telling the market his thoughts on what is wrong with the retail market today.

The Former Samsung VP and before that the General Manager of Buying at the failed Dick Smith business, describes himself today as the Founder & Principal (Interim & Advisory of a new business called ChannelAxis.

Senior who exited Samsung suddenly as sales of TVs and appliances were falling has taken to LinkedIn to rationalise issues he sees in the market.

He claims that within the space of a week earlier this year, Wesfarmers and Super Retail held strategy days, Barbeques Galore entered liquidation, and Lincraft said it would close its entire store network after more than eighty years.

They look like four separate stories. I think they are the same one he claims

Both strategy days pointed to the same conclusion.

Growth now comes from inside the business, not from a market that is growing.

It is built on cost discipline, first-party data, retail media and expansion into new categories.

The closures point the other way.

Flat demand and rising costs are punishing anyone without scale or real differentiation.

He claims that ‘What interests me more is the supply side, where the response has not caught up’.

Most suppliers still engage retailers the way they did a decade ago.

An annual plan of volume targets, promotional funding and a category review once a year.

The retailer, meanwhile, has moved from running categories to running a portfolio, and now holds more of the customer relationship and the data than the supplier does.

The operating model on one side of the table has changed.

The commercial model on the other has not.

That mismatch is where some of the largest unrealised value in Australian retail now sits.

Closing that gap is not about negotiating harder, or a better annual plan.

It is a different way of working, built around the whole life of the customer rather than the next quarter.

The retailer knows what the customer bought and when.

The supplier knows the product, the service history, and increasingly how the connected device is used.

Brought together, they reach moments neither side can see alone, like the replacement that happens at home after a service call, not on the shop floor.

The opportunity is to pair product innovation with differentiated, joint approaches that grow new segments neither side can build alone.

Household energy management is the clearest case, a category no supplier can create on its own and no retailer can either, one that exists only if both commit to building it together.

None of this softens the hard edges between brands and retailers, and it is not meant to. It moves the relationship from a fight over who funds the next promotion to a shared agenda that outlasts a quarter.

I have come to think the next real advantage in Australian retail will not come from another category. It will come from suppliers and retailers building commercial models that create value neither could on its own.

For leaders on both sides of that table, the question is simple he said “Is your engagement model built for the market you are in, or the one you were in ten years ago”.