Their actions came only hours before their financial results were published and was in our opinion an orchestrated strategy to try and discredit us from reporting the shocking performance of the Japanese Company.
We wish to correct these claims as they are blatantly false.
In their statement Sony say that 4Square Media's publication ChannelNews recently reported that major retailers Harvey Norman and JB Hi Fi were considering not stocking Sony products as a result of Sony planning to open further stores.
We never ever said this.
What ChannelNews reported was as follows. Under the headline Is Sony Set To Dump Sony? We wrote EXCLUSIVE: Harvey Norman, who back in 2001 dumped Australia's then number one PC Company Compaq after discovering that they were set to open nine retail stores, is today set to hold discussions with Sony about the expansion of their Sony Central stores in Australia.
We then went on to write. It is expected that Sony will be told that if they expand to 19 stores or, "more than what they have now, that they will be dumped from Harvey Norman stores".
This was a direct quote from a Harvey Norman franchisee and not ChannelNews.
We also wrote.
David Ackery, a director at Harvey Norman said last night that he was set to discuss the issue with Sony and that the expansion of Sony Central stores was "not good and not wanted by the mass retailer""Before I comment in detail and want to discuss the issue with Sony" he said.
We later reported that Ackery had spoken to Carl Rose at Sony on the issue of Sony Central stores, and that Harvey Norman would not be removing Sony products from their stores.
The question in the headline was 100% legitimate as several years ago Gerry Harvey dumped Compaq who was then the #1 PC brand in Australia, when we revealed that Compaq was planning an 8 store chain of stores across Australia.
At the time Compaq CEO Ian Penman believed that Harvey Norman was not adding value to his brand and that the cost of doing business with Harvey Norman was expensive.
We also ran another headline in relation to the Sony stores issue that said "Sony Boned By Their Biggest Customer".
