TERRY MCCRANN

very much more difficult.

All this showed up graphically in the numbers it unveiled yesterday and its vulnerability both to the direct impact of the online GST and the indirect impact of those online suppliers who ain’t paying it nevertheless.

Kogan is extremely exposed to the devastating competitive impact of an across-the-board 10 per cent lift in price in a way Amazon (the parent, not the local arm) isn’t.

Further, Kogan-branded products don’t have anything remotely like the brand-value of Amazon Prime to cushion the pain – especially as their whole marketing dynamic rests on price and paper-thin margins.

Brutally, this really poses the most basic existential questions for Kogan; and it does so at a very delicate time in both the broader retail and both global and domestic financial environments.

More broadly it suggests that the 10 per cent GST on online retail is both working and failing.

It’s failing where it’s being ignored – we shall have to see whether that persists. But it’s working to at least crimp online players, where their model has been low-margin, highvolume and yet minimal working capital. Whether it works proactively,

to send sales back into bricks and mortar retail or at least back onto their domestic sites, we will again have to see. This Christmas after