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Liam Dann: NZ Herald business editor at large on Temu's harmful impact on local businesses · The SME Stream

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It's started the program. We talked about the fact that
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: like one in four of us have bought something from Timu,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: the Chinese retailer, in the past three months. It's been
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: hugely popular, a popular thanks to the very cheap prices
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: and free shipping. Liam dan Is, The Herald's Business editor
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: at large, with us on this. He Liam, get Heather,
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: you bought from Timu?
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: No, No, never have. Actually I guess my kids might have.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I don't know. And there's another one in the story
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I was reading at fourteen percent of Kiwis have brought
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: something from Shane Shine Sheen.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: We're not sure how to pronounce it.
• 0:30
  Speaker 2: This is like me looking at the band's lists on
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: the rock music festivals now and it's not.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: Really you can't remember this a case. So, Kenzie the Zuma,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: are you a zoomer, Kenzie, Kenzi the Zoomer is still
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: at work at the moment, which is an unusual thing.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: And she says, it's Sheen.
• 0:46
  Speaker 2: Sheen, Okay, very good, and I'm sure it's probably it's
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: probably really great, high quality stuff.
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: As I know, it's rubbish, Kenzie, it's total rubbish, she said,
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: It's just nonsense. But it's cheap right, So if you're
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: just going to use it the one time, then happy days,
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: like for a party or whatever. Okay, what is it
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: doing to retailers?
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: Well, I think it's a concern because obviously retailer has
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: been sort of down and out, having a terrible time
• 1:09
  Speaker 2: because of the inflation, recession, all these domestic issues that
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: we've got, and then it feels like we're going to
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: sort of wake up from that, and this structural issue,
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: this structural change in retailing is going to, you know,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: just just make it that much harder for some of
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: these retailers to come back. I recall it was only
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: Dune actually, but in the last GDP figures we saw
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: signs of this because there was buried in there there
• 1:35
  Speaker 2: was a statistic for consumer imports of low value goods
• 1:40
  Speaker 2: that showed that they had risen fifty percent in the
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: last year and up twenty percent in the March quarter alone.
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: So if that's you know, if that's the kind of
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: trajectory we're on and we've already got a quarter of
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Kiwis using TIMU, you've got to wonder where it ends.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: I hope it ends with them people realizing they probably
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: need less stuff and maybe by some more high quality
• 2:01
  Speaker 2: stuff and have it last. But I don't know that
• 2:03
  Speaker 2: that trend is suddenly about to descend on us.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: Is this I mean, so this is obviously part of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the warehouse's problem. Is it possible for us to kind
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: of extrapolate how much of this is that is causing
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: the warehouses problems and how much of the warehouse's problems
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: is just the warehouse?
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. I think it's an issue for where
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: retailer is like a warehouse, because you know, if you're
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: a small retailer on the on a main street New Zealand,
• 2:26
  Speaker 2: I guess you can go up up market and you know,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: sell the good stuff that people buy for special occasions
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: and things, and then you're not not competing with Timu.
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: But if your model is based on importing cheap manufactured
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: Chinese goods, then they're cutting out the middleman here and
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: that's the problem. And look, I don't know's it's multi
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: factoral the warehouses issues, so I would be hesitant to
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: say it's one thing, but I think this is a
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: sort of a big downward pressure on sales even beyond
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: the sort of short term economic cycle. So it will
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: be interesting to see if it can overcome that in
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: the next year.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: Hey, listen on the inflation number yesterday and what the
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: ocr does Are you picking fifty or seventy five?
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah? I reckon maybe seventy five. I mean, you know, yeah,
• 3:10
  Speaker 2: I mean, shesh.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: This is the thing. If they go seventy five, right,
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: that is an admission that they stuff this up.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I guess it's how much you know, But surely
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: they've got to do the right thing for the economy.
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: And I don't know that seventy five is yet, but
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: there are signs that, you know, if the economy is
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: really as bad as people are sort of saying and feeling,
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: and you know, you could make the case it was
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: a special event COVID the pandemic inflation happened. Rates had
• 3:38
  Speaker 2: to go up, and they had to go up in
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: a sort of in a crisis mode. If the crisis
• 3:42
  Speaker 2: is over, they should come down fast. And you know,
• 3:45
  Speaker 2: whether who was right or wrong or whatever, that sort
• 3:48
  Speaker 2: of secondary to getting the settings right quickly. I know
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: it's still an outside chance, but the markets have it
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: about forty percent odds on a seventy five point basis cut,
• 3:56
  Speaker 2: so you know, it'll only take a little bit of
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: a bit more bad news. Whose the unemployment data coming
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: in a bit lower, a bit higher I guess it
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: would be, and you could could easily see.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: That brilliant hate. Liam love chatting to you, really appreciate
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: It's Liam Dan the Herald's business center at large.