Latest / Best of Business / Liam Dann: NZ Herald business editor at large on Temu's harmful impact on local businesses

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Liam Dann: NZ Herald business editor at large on Temu's harmful impact on local businesses · Best of Business

• 0:09
  Speaker 1: You're listening to a podcast from News Talks. There'd be
• 0:12
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• 0:16
  Speaker 2: It started the program. We talked about the fact that
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  Speaker 2: like one in four of us have bought something from Timu,
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  Speaker 2: the Chinese retailer, in the past three months. It's been
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  Speaker 2: hugely popular, a popular thanks to the very cheap prices
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  Speaker 2: and free shipping. Liam dan Is, The Herald's Business editor
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  Speaker 2: at large, with us on this alien get.
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  Speaker 3: A heather You bought from Timu? No, No, never have. Actually,
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  Speaker 3: I guess my kids might have. I don't know. And
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  Speaker 3: there's another one in the story I was reading at
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  Speaker 3: fourteen percent of Kiwis have brought something from Shane Shine Sheen.
• 0:45
  Speaker 2: We're not sure how to pronounce it.
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  Speaker 3: This is like me looking at the band's lists on
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  Speaker 3: the rock music festivals now and it's not read No.
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: You can't remember this a case. So, Kenzie the Zuma,
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: are you a zoomer, Kenzie, Kenzi the Zoomer is still
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: at work at the moment, which is an unusual thing,
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  Speaker 2: And she says it's Sheen.
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  Speaker 3: Sheen, Okay, very good, and I'm sure it's probably it's
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  Speaker 3: probably really great. High quality stuff.
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  Speaker 2: It's rubbish, It's total rubbish, she said. It's just a nonsense.
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  Speaker 2: But it's cheap, right, So if you're just going to
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  Speaker 2: use it the one time, then happy days, like for
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  Speaker 2: a party or whatever. Okay, what is it doing to retailers?
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  Speaker 3: Well, I think it's a concern because obviously retailer has
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  Speaker 3: been sort of down and out, having a terrible time
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  Speaker 3: because of the you know, inflation, recession, all these domestic
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  Speaker 3: issues that we've got, and then it feels like we're
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  Speaker 3: going to sort of wake up from that, and this
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  Speaker 3: structural issue, this structural change in retailing is going to
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  Speaker 3: you know, just just make it that much harder for
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  Speaker 3: some of these retailers to come back. I recall it
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  Speaker 3: was only Dune actually, but in the last GDP figures
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  Speaker 3: we saw signs of this because there was buried in
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  Speaker 3: there there was a statistic for consumer imports of low
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  Speaker 3: value goods that showed that they had risen fifty percent
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  Speaker 3: in the last year and up twenty percent in the
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  Speaker 3: March quarter alone. So if that's you know, if that's
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  Speaker 3: the kind of trajectory we're on, then we've already got
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  Speaker 3: a quarter of Kiwi's using team you've got to wonder
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  Speaker 3: where it ends. I hope it ends with them people
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  Speaker 3: realizing they probably need less stuff and maybe buy some
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  Speaker 3: more high quality stuff and have it last. But I
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  Speaker 3: don't know that that trend is suddenly about to descend
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  Speaker 3: on us.
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  Speaker 1: Is this?
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  Speaker 2: I mean, so this is obviously part of the warehouses problem.
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  Speaker 2: Is it possible for us to kind of extrapolate how
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  Speaker 2: much of this is that is causing the warehouses problems
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  Speaker 2: and how much of the warehouse's problems is just the warehouse?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. I think it's an issue for where
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  Speaker 3: retailer is like a warehouse, because you know, if you're
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  Speaker 3: a small retailer on the on a main street New Zealand,
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  Speaker 3: I guess you can go up up market and you know,
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  Speaker 3: sell the good stuff that people buy for special occasions
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  Speaker 3: and things, and then you're not not competing with Timu.
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  Speaker 3: But if your model is based on importing cheap manufactured
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  Speaker 3: Chinese goods, then they're cutting out the middleman here, and
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  Speaker 3: that's the problem. And look, I don't know, it's multi
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  Speaker 3: factoral the warehouses issues, so I would be hesitant to
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  Speaker 3: say it's one thing, but I think this is a
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  Speaker 3: sort of a big downward pressure on sales even beyond
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  Speaker 3: the sort of short term economic cycle. So it will
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  Speaker 3: be interesting to see if it can overcome that in
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  Speaker 3: the next year.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, listen on the inflation number yesterday, and what the
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  Speaker 2: ocr does. Are you picking fifty or seventy five?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah? I reckon maybe seventy five. I mean, you know, yeah,
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  Speaker 3: I mean, shesh.
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  Speaker 2: This is the thing. If they go seventy five, right,
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  Speaker 2: that is an admission that they stuff this up.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it's how much, you know, But surely
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  Speaker 3: they've got to do the right thing for the economy.
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  Speaker 3: And I don't know that seventy five is yet, but
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  Speaker 3: there are signs that, you know, if the economy is
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  Speaker 3: really as bad as people are sort of saying and feeling,
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  Speaker 3: and you know, you could make the case it was
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  Speaker 3: a special event COVID the pandemic inflation happened. Rates had
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  Speaker 3: to go up, and they had to go up in
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  Speaker 3: a sort of in a crisis mode. If the crisis
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  Speaker 3: is over, they should come down fast. And you know,
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: whether who was right or wrong or whatever, that sort
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  Speaker 3: of secondary to getting the settings right quickly. I know,
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  Speaker 3: it's all outside chances, but to the market's have it about
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  Speaker 3: forty percent odds on a seventy five point basis cat,
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  Speaker 3: so you know it will only take a little bit
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  Speaker 3: of a bit more bad news that unemployment data coming
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  Speaker 3: in a bit lower, a bit higher, I guess it
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  Speaker 3: would be, and you could could easily see.
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  Speaker 2: That brilliant hete Liam love chatting to you, really appreciate
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  Speaker 2: its Liam Dan, the Herald's business enter at large.
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