Kogan buys Dick Smith but challenge is to not damage his own brand
Kogan faces a risk with Dick Smith takeover
Ruslan Kogan has been warned that he has a huge task rehabilitating a “toxic” Dick Smith brand after revealing today that he purchased all of the online retail assets of the business.
While Dick Smith himself has hailed the move by a man who bought electronic components from his stores as a child, retail experts say Kogan runs the risk of damaging his own brand with consumers who lost money with gift cards and lay-buys.
Barry Urquart, managing director of retail specialists, Marketing Focus, said that Kogan had been canny in recognising an opportunity in taking over the failed business, but he needed to be wary of fall-out from consumer creditors expecting him to honour their gift cards.
Excellent move, I wish him well. Kogan certainly has the customer support and the “on line” presence to make it work. The iconic addition will be a great boost in itself, and Kogan is already trusted and proven in the electronics field for price, quality and dependability.
got the email this morning about this. Had a link to the companies privacy policy. It was broken. I removed my details from their list.
You could say Kogan already started the damage control when they ran their promo to swap DS gift cards for Kogan credit vouchers:
https://www.kogan.com/au/dick-smith-gift-card-swap/
To call the Dick Smith brand ‘toxic’ is a bit of a stretch, their failure was their business/product strategy not the brand.
Ruslan Kogan is like Dick Smith in that they were both very entrepreneurial in launching their eponymous businesses. However, Ruslan Kogan is very like Dick Smith in that Kogan has less care for quality and customer service than making a buck, and this more than anything else is going to be the weakest link in rebuilding the DSE brand.
Surely that second comparison should be “unlike”
Yes, my mistake David Hague, I meant to say that in the second issue Kogan is very UNLIKE Dick Smith.