Rod Duke, Briscoe Group's managing director and largest shareholder. Photo / Dean Purcell
As the economic downturn and online shopping take their toll on local retailers, Briscoe Group, headed by Rod Duke, continues to defy the odds with solid sales.
In fact, Duke tells the Money Talks Podcast, it has big expansion plans.
“Look, we’re in the glamorous position that for the last 35 years we’ve saved a lot of money. We haven’t borrowed any money from a bank for 25 years. So we’re cash rich, we’re not indebted,” Duke says.
“We’ve got spectacular staff. We’ve looked after them, all through Covid. Look, make no mistake, it is tough. It’s very, very, very tough in the suburb, I’m not going to have a record year in terms of profit, but we’re going to go all right.”
Some things are on hold until the economy improves, Duke says.
“But sometimes you spend a lot of money when it’s tough because you know, you’re going to come out of it. I just can’t tell you whether it’s going to be at the end of this year or next year. We’ll come through it. The cycle will turn and the strongest will survive.”
Duke declines to reveal any specifics of his expansion plans but is very clear that he still has growth ambitions.
“It’s not over. We’ve got some big plans coming up. We’re looking to expand the business. We’re looking to acquire or establish a bigger business.”
Briscoe still has a lot of capacity and “a fabulous trading platform”, he says. “I don’t think we’re anywhere near the end of expansion yet.”
Despite having owned and managed the business for nearly 40 years, Duke has no plans to retire.
“I can’t begin to imagine what I would do if I didn’t have the responsibility of a business that I basically gave birth to,” he says.
He enjoys golf and loves travelling and socialising with his wife and friends. He has invested in some racehorses.
But his real passion is still retailing. It has been since he was a teenager.
Duke, who was born in Australia, left school at 16 to work in a shoe shop because he just loved to sell things.
“I was just fascinated by the proposition of buying something and then reselling it for more than I pay for it,” he says.
“I was a very unusual adolescent, not particularly keen on school except for the sporting part of it. For me, it was all about preparing myself for the workforce. I was just dying to get into a shop and learn how to approach and sell to people, how to buy something for an amount of money and then sell it for a little more.”
His first memories of money are of counting large piles of it. His father was a bookmaker at the races in Adelaide and would get a young Duke to count the winnings every Sunday.
“I was about 10 or 12 years old. And, as is typical, a bookmaker fields at the races on Saturday. And then when he wakes up Sunday morning, he gets his betting bags, empties all the money and hopefully there’s a lot.”
His father would empty the cash onto the floor and tell the kids to count it.
“I want the notes sorted this way, and there’s a rubber band that you put around them. And all the silver, you sort this way, and then if you sort it, then I’ll come down and I’ll count it out and put it away.”
It is a vivid memory and one that may have shaped the young Duke’s passion for making money.
But he says it has never really been about the money itself. He started out chasing independence and then set himself targets for success.
“I think that [money] is a by-product but for me, it’s not a real motivation,” he said. “Making money for the business so I can support the 2000 families who work in the business, now that’s a bit of fun.
“Covid recently, with the lockdowns, well that tested us enormously, but it was a lot of fun to get through that, survive that and come out very much stronger business. It wasn’t a lot of fun then, but it’s a lot of fun looking back on it.”
After his teenage shoe shop job, he moved on to appliances and worked his way up through the ranks as a retail manager – eventually becoming managing director of Norman Ross (the forerunner of retail chain Harvey Norman).
It’s an incredible corporate run for someone with no formal education.
Clearly, he has a knack for sales.
“I had no trouble selling to people. I felt very comfortable about it.”
But there is more to retailing than just sales as Duke learned on the way through.
“You learn a lot in each of the roles that you fulfil. In the early roles, you’re learning about people and what it takes to sell. In the middle roles, you’re learning about the value of inventory, the value of promotions, what turns people on, what makes people get out of their lounge chair and run to your store and buy something,” he says.
“It’s not just price. The price is a serious motivator, but it’s not just price. And so you’re learning all the way through. You’re learning about the tax implications, the depreciation, and the value of owning stores rather than renting them or renting them at the right price. It’s not just about making sales. You’ve got to make sales. You’ve got to make a margin. It’s all about going to factories all over the world and buying at the right price. It’s very, very hard to sell at the right price if you have not bought at the right price.”
By 1988, when Duke was recruited by Dutch retailing giant Hagemeyer, to manage and turn around its struggling Briscoes chain in New Zealand, he was already an industry veteran.
“By the time I came to New Zealand, I was already familiar with what might be required to fix an organisation. I’d already pretty well done it in Australia, which was, quite a different market to New Zealand at that point,” he says.
“When I arrived in this country, there were a lot of things that we did in Australia that we didn’t do in this country.”
He estimates New Zealand was about a decade behind the rest of the world when it came to retailing. It presented an opportunity he wasn’t about to pass up.
“For example Sunday trading. Sunday trading was illegal in this country. So we did some homework, found out how illegal it was. How likely we were to get caught, and fined. Did the general public really want it?” he says.
“Well, they did. And we did it, albeit illegally. But we were writing a month’s turnover in a day. And we did it for six weeks on our own before the Government made it legal.”
Duke also brought with him a more modern approach to marketing, including regular sales and the introduction of a face for the brand.
“Briscoes lady” Tammy Wells has become something of a Kiwi icon after nearly four decades with the brand.
“For the first three or four months from that September 1988, right through to Christmas we’d done loud, in-your-face, high-discount, get into the store, ads, Duke says.
“That was never going to last forever. And we needed an iconic face that projected and showed folks the value of my brand. We did a whole lot of interviews and Tammy came through very, very strong. We tested her in the market. That also came through very strong. And here we are. So it was a good call hiring her because she’s really resonated with the New Zealand public. And she’s been an important part of our team.”
Listen to the full episode to hear more from Rod Duke about his successful career in retail, and the differences between Australia and New Zealand retail.
Money Talks is a podcast run by the NZ Herald. It isn’t about personal finance and isn’t about economics - it’s just well-known New Zealanders talking about money and sharing some stories about the impact it’s had on their lives and how it has shaped them.
The series is hosted by Liam Dann, business editor-at-large for the Herald. He is a senior writer and columnist, and also presents and produces videos and podcasts. He joined the Herald in 2003.
Money Talks is available on iHeartRadio, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How has New Zealand's oldest department store outlasted its competitors? One word: family.