Senior Bing Lee management have said that the operations of the Sony Central store in Chatswood will be merged with the Sony Central Store in Drummoyne due to falling patronage at the North Shore Store.
The manager who contacted ChannelNews after we exclusively revealed the closing of the Chatswood Store which has operated for more than 25 years said that the Drummoyne Sony Central Store was also suffering from a fall in revenue.
“The store at Drummoyne is cheaper to run as the Lee family own the premises” said the manager.
“Revenues at both stores have been falling for some time. Consumers do not see the Sony brand as being a premium brand anymore and many do not want to go out of their way to a specific Sony branded when they can see a lot of the same Sony products at Bing Lee, Harvey Norman and several other mass retailers” they said.
“On occasions we have had some Sony products on sale that are exclusive to the Sony Central stores; these are products that other retailers have not wanted to take. Some of the products have been expensive as a result consumers have not purchased them and we have had to discount them to get rid of them”.
Former management claimed earlier in the week that the Chatswood Sony Central store which was previously owned by David & Andy Rose has been transformed by Bing Lee from a thriving retail destination with a $13 Million per annum turnover to a store that today is struggling to hit $5 Million in turnover.
The General Manager of Bing Lee Phil Moujaes has not returned ChannelNews calls. It is not known whether Bing Lee is set to cut staff after the closure of the Chatswood store.
A person connected to the store said, “The lack of personalised service and knowledgeable floor sales staff drove the regular clientele away. Instead of the Apple model, they used the Bing Lee model.”
A former Sony Australia executive who recently left the Japanese company told ChannelNews that “all of the Sony Central stores are struggling, the Sony brand is disintegrating, the culture that use to prevail in the company has gone and Sony is struggling across every consumer electronics category that they operate in.”
“Other Sony Central Stores will shut up shop because the Sony brand is no longer seen as a premium brand,” the former employee said.
