While shopping in Balmain Woolworths on Monday I found that pieces of bright orange cake were getting pushed in the direction of customers. Initially I thought that would be a fruit cake, but it turned out to be a sponge chocolate cake.

So, why the cake?
What are they celebrating?

Apparently a new addition to their Everyday Rewards point cards. A deal with Qantas that you can get frequent flyer points by spending money at Woolworths.

So now you get Qantas points and fuel points in the same transaction.

How young is too young for girls to use deodorant?

In a supermarket the other day I noticed these ‘perfumed body spray’s, right next adult deodorant. Obviously they are aimed at young girls via the Bratz brand.

Do young girls really need to be pushed into the word of makeup and perfume?

In the chocolate aisle at Coles the other day I noticed a paradox in pricing. The 100g blocks of Cadbury chocolate are $2.99. And the 200g blocks are on special at 2 for $6.

So would you rather spend $3 and get 100g, or $6 and get 400g? Very much a economics of scale I suppose.

If you have ever walked the streets of Tokyo you will understand why Japan is the land of the loyalty club. At station hubs there are many stores and supermarkets. Not to mention the number of small stores scattered across what seem to be back lanes. And the army of vending machines that keep watch over the streets.

With so many places to spend your money there must be a way to retain customers. And that way is the Points Card, or “ポイントカード”. If you submit to the sign up procedure, and remember to show your card before purchases, you accumulate points based on the amount you purchase.  On accumulating enough points (and making many purchases) you receive a reward  determined by the store.

It seems that almost every store you go into has a Point Card of some sort. Be it a plastic card with a bar code or a magnetic strip, a paper card that you get stamps on or apply stickers to, or some sort of fancy RFID card (Keferl, 2008). They are all a way to seek your continued patronage of the store. (more…)

Yesterday there were a few things that happened that I though were a little ironic in the way they were prioritised.

I went to a Denny’s in Shinjuku last night. Like many establishments in Japan, Denny’s doesn’t require you to sign the bill when paying via credit card. The irony of the situation though is that they wanted me to sign the discount voucher that I was using in the space provided.

So they needed to get a signature to use the 500¥ ($5) loyalty card, but they didn’t seem to need a signature for the 2000¥ ($20) credit card slip.

At Woolworths in Marrickville Metro on Friday night I noticed some bread from a different time zone, +851 GMT.

It was interesting to so much bread on sale, a full table and shelf. Must have cooked too much and about to go off. But close inspection revealed that it wasn’t to expire till 10 or 11 February 2008.

Only problem is it hadn’t even been baked yet! The baked date was ‘8 February 2008‘.

There is something fishy going on here, and I’m not talking Omega-3 in bread.

Woolworths must be shipping in bread from the future to supplement its bakery on high demand days. And they got carried away, shipping in too much from too far in the future. Looks like a job for Jean Claude Van Damme.

Though a more probable explanation for this is that someone set the date on the labelling machine wrong. So it is printing dates out of whack by more than a month. So Woolworths is probably just trying to sell off quickly bread that has been mislabelled.

The time travel version is more interesting, though the mislabelling is more likely correct.

At $2.49 for a 250g block that’s just under a cent per gram. Very cheap Cadbury chocolate.

(Follow up to Newtown IGA is no more…)

I visited the ‘new’ store tonight. The new opening hours sign is up, and the times are the same.

The supermarket in Newtown was once a Franklins, but when Woolworths bought the chain in 2001 it divested its interest in some of the stores[1]. The ACCC ruling[2] says “To promote competition, Woolworths is required to divest its stores at the following locations“, which included Newtown.

So if Woolworths bought Frinklins how has is Newtown IGA becoming a Franklins?

Well it seems that when Dairy Farm was getting out of the supermarket business it didn’t sell all the stores to Woolworths. Some of the Franklins stores in NSW, and the name, got sold to Pick ‘n Pay[3, 5]. Who retained the name and what remained of the chain.

So it appears that the owners of the supermarket in Newtown have swapped franchise, from IGA to Franklins. As far as I can tell all the staff are the same, and the store hasn’t been dramatically rearranged, just rebadged.

References

1. Woolworths’ Acquisition Of Franklins Stores (10 July 2001)
2. ACCC Gets Legally-Enforceable Undertakings From Dairy Farm, Franklins and Woolworths (7 June 2001)
3. Franklins - About Us
4. Franklins risks takeover bid: analyst (SMH, 24 April 2007)
5. Franklins - Wikipedia

Are you the sort of Newtownian that thinks at 11pm “I need some blah, better duck off to Newtown IGA” ?

Well as of tonight that might be a thing of the past.

In my jaunt off to Newtown IGA tonight I found it closed and someone scrapping off the IGA logo from inside the windows. Looks like it is now a Franklins. That’s what the new sign hanging from the awning says anyway.

I wonder what the new stores opening hours will be? I saw the old list of times coming down, but didn’t hang around long enough to see what the new times are. I hope they don’t change.

The other question being will the supermarket change what they stock, becoming part of a major chain again? IGAs are given an amount of flexability in what they stock, more organics in Newtown and a store in Enmore has a good range of asian vegetables. Will being a Franklines make their stock conform to a set list, or will they stll be able to choose a variation suitable for the stores location?

I only wish I had a camera on me to take pictures of people scrapping the IGA logo off windows.

Had the head fall off my shower today. How useful do you think the internet would be for finding the cost of a replacement? Not very.

I tried looking up prices on Hardware retailers web sites. No prices, not even a catalogue.

Starting with Miter10. I wondered why they web site wasn’t working[1], until I realised that it needed the www on the beginning to work[2] It amazes me how many web sites are setup this way. I don’t ses why they don’t have both resolve, or the non-www version just redirect to the www version. Web hosts should make it easier to find sites. not harder.

Back to the search for a rose.

On Mitre10 site I couldn’t find a catalog, unless you want to live outdoors[3]. But I want to live inside and have a shower, so I moved on to the site’s search facility.

Entering shower rose and clicking GO I got the following error:

CreateRecordset error ‘8004181d’

There is no catalog.

/search/includes/index_server.asp, line 52

So, as you can see, there is no catalogue on the Mitre10 site. They are a series of franchises, so maybe no common catalogue.

My next attempt was with the Bunnings site. Another site that doesn’t work without the www[4,5].

Mouse over OUR RANGE and the only thing in the drop down menu is Gift Cards. Surely they have more then this? They are a harware store not a gift shop.

Clicking OUR RANGE actually gets you a larger list of things to look up. Unfortunately nothing for the bathroom, only Gazebos[6]. Not that that matters really, all the catalogue sub-pages linked to display the following error:

Internal Server Error

We have encountered an internal server error. Please try again in a few minutes.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

If this error persists, please report the problem here

Please click to return to the bunnings home page

The Bunnings site’s search doesn’t give me any error messages. But it also doesn’t find any shower roses.

So I’m left with no idea the cost of a replacement shower rose. If only harware stores could get their act together and put up useful website. It seems that they are too dependant on you coming into the store.

References:

1. mitre10.com.au
2. www.mitre10.com.au
3. Let’s live outdoors
4. bunnings.com.au
5. www.bunnings.com.au
6. Something you won’t find in the D&D Monster Manual
7. Urban Dictionary - Gazebo