I'll cut and paste a previous post of mine on why they went into...

I'll cut and paste a previous post of mine on why they went into hardware. Overall, I still think the decision to do it was a good one. But the execution was an absolute shocker. A combination of compromises on locations (Woolies fault), did not have the wrong stock (didn't they bring in Lowes for that kind of expertise?) has put WOW in this position with Masters.

"Trying to put some perspective into this, from memory the hardware market in Australia is about $40bn, and Bunnings with the largest market share actually 'only' had about 20% of this market. When I say 'only', you compare it to the groceries where Coles and Woolies between them control 70% of the market, with the split being around 40% Woolies, 30% Coles.

With the major player in hardware having 'only' 20% market share, at the outset (to me anyway), it seemed to make sense for Woolies to have a go at building a position in this before Bunnings got any bigger, which would undoubtedly make a challenging task even more so.

Unfortunately they've been plagued by poor execution in terms of compromising on store location and stock selection issues for example."