Online salesman Ruslan Kogan says big stores are using him as a scapegoat Chiple Grand From: The Australian January 05, 2011 12:44am Increase Text Size Decrease Text Size Print Email Share
Online TV retailer Ruslan Kogan. Picture: Supplied
Gerry Harvey has called him a "con" Says online blamed for stores' failings Real issue is "poor performance" TO big retailers, he is the devil in a hoodie - a fast-talking, in-your-face TV salesman whose online expansion is pinching their customers.
Harvey Norman boss Gerry Harvey has gone so far as to call him a con, reported The Australian.
Yet the way Ruslan Kogan sees the fast emerging world of online retail - and the fierce campaign against it by the likes of Mr Harvey and Myers boss Bernie Brookes - it is the big stores who are having a lend of consumers.
At 28, Melbourne-born Mr Kogan has gone from working out of his mum's garage to rubbing well-tailored shoulders with other entrepreneurs on the BRW rich list . . . all in the space of five years and all from selling self-named televisions and electronic consumer goods online.
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He says his success and the success of other e-retailers is now being used as a scapegoat by traditional, bricks and mortar businesses trying to divert attention from their own poor performance. "There is a deliberate ploy to confuse the public," Mr Kogan said yesterday before boarding a flight to Las Vegas.
"They have a plan to make people hold on to shares in failing businesses for as long as possible, and they are looking for a scapegoat. It is always disgusting when you have got businessmen trying to lobby for increased taxes and regulation to stay competitive rather than to innovate."
Mr Kogan says rather than calling for more tax or stiffer regulations, the big retailers should be looking at the inefficiencies within their own businesses - from the huge amounts they pay on rent and staff to cumbersome supply chains.
He said the internet had made consumers far more savvy.
"Now you have the same guy who sells you a toaster trying to sell you an LED and claiming to be an expert in both. People are becoming way too smart for that.
"If I was these guys, I wouldn't be using my political muscle to try to increase taxes and change regulations, I would use my commercial muscle to get better prices from Canon and Nikon and Hewlett Packard and Sony." The Kogan business model, as Mr Kogan likes to call it, is to sell home-brand goods assembled from many of the same components that make up more expensive brand models.
By selling direct, he claims to cut out the "middlemen" such as agents, importers/exporters and distributors who each demand a cut in a traditional supply chain.
"We are nobody's bitch," Mr Kogan said.
"Our prices aren't dictated by a distributor who has no pulling power."
