Ruslan Kogan, the loud mouth CEO of Kogan Technology appears to have made a “goose” of himself, yesterday, when in front of a large audience of technology writers, vendors and PR companies, on the Gold Coast, he claimed that 30% of JB Hi Fi’s revenue was coming from Apple products and that Apple was set to pull the plug on their retail partners.
“The biggest retailers in Australia are Apple’s bitch” he added.
“Apple is silently waiting for the perfect moment to pull the pin on its third party distribution network,” he says. “Make no mistake about it, the time will come when Apple pulls out, and that may well be the end of bricks and mortar as we know it.”
Kogan who is fast becoming the laughing stock of the consumer electronics industry for his “loudmouth” comments claims JB Hi Fi and other such retailers will suffer at the hands of Apple as Apple maintains control of the customer via the iTunes ecosystem.
He claims Apple will eventually turn its back third party retailers, leaving them in the lurch.
“This is simply not true” claims Terry Smart the CEO of JB Hi Fi. “30% of our business is not reliant on Apple and I am not aware of any plans by Apple to curtail their relationship with us”.
An Apple executive said: “There are no plans to cut our retail relationships”.
A major technology vendor attending the Kickstart Conference on the Gold Coast said: “I have heard a lot about this guy Kogan, so I was interested in what he had to say. But after hearing him at Kickstart, go on about Apple and JB Hi Fi, I was amazed. He’s a goose who seems to spit out claims simply to get publicity. He won’t last long in this industry”.
Terry Smart said: “This is just wild claims without substance. Apple is just one of many clients that we have”.
During his visit to the Kickstart conference, Kogan was also forced to eat humble pie after earlier in the year claiming that he would give Myer a free add on his web site if they ever launched a web site from China.
Yesterday, an advertisement appeared for the new Myer web site, myfind.com site at kogan.com.
When questioned after his presentation, Kogan refused to reveal how many TVs he actually sells despite trying to position his Kogan branded TVs as a major player in the Australian market.
He also refused to reveal the average selling price of goods on his web site which he claims has sold over 200,000 products in three years which is a “ridiculously” small amount according to JB Hi Fi.
“A single JB Hi Fi and Harvey Norman store does significantly more than that in a year” said a JB Hi Fi executive.