Mitre 10 Tracking Strongly at Half Year

Mitre 10 (New Zealand) Ltd

14 January, 2013
For Immediate Release

Mitre 10 Tracking Strongly at Half Year

Six months into its current financial year national retailer Mitre 10 seems set to comfortably maintain its position as New Zealand’s leading national home improvement and gardening chain.

The store network is performing very strongly compared to the previous six month July 1- December 31, 2011 period both on all store and comparable store figures and is tracking towards comfortably retaining the No. 1 home improvement retailer position it has held for the past two years.

In October 2012, Mitre 10 announced full year sales figures of $858.37 million and a rebate to members of more than $45 million, sales figures that were up 6.5% on the previous year. For the first six months of the new financial year Mitre 10 year-to-date sales figures are up 9.1% on the previous comparable period and CEO John Hartmann is confident those numbers will remain firm for the remainder of the financial year.

Mitre 10 also had a very strong December month with sales up almost 10% overall including a building products jump of 23.4% on the previous December, hardware and gardening up 7.6% on last year and renovation and décor product lines up 6.5%.

“Our growth is a nice balance from new stores and existing store comparable sales and we continue to take market share in the all-important trade sector,” says Mr Hartmann. “New retail product lines, our customer service focus and the recruitment of key staff to improve our trade performance are all paying off.”

While overall sales are up by more than 9% across all stores the Mitre 10 MEGA format continues to show its popularity with customers with Mitre 10 MEGA store sales up 14%. The average transaction value is also up by 6% and customer count –measured by number of transactions - is also up by 3%.

Mitre 10 is aggressively expanding its network with confirmed plans for another eight Mitre 10 MEGA stores before the end of 2014 but the leading hardware and gardening retailer is also showing good growth in comparable store comparisons.

Year-to-date sales are up 8.2% on same store comparisons for the first six-month period with Mitre 10 MEGA stores up 10%. The same store customer count is up 4.7% by transaction with average value of those transactions up by 3.4%

“I think those store-on-store comparisons show how effective the refresh of our format and product lines and the ongoing emphasis on customer service is for consumers,” said Mr Hartmann.

Mitre 10 is using its own unique customer feedback system – called My 10 Cents Worth – to track customer responses. Around 1,000 customers per week have logged into the system since its launch in late September and they are providing feedback that is so effective that individual stores in the national network can alter their product lines and service features to suit customer feedback.

Mr Hartmann gave an example of a North Island store that changed its staff rosters to add more staff to weekend shifts following customer feedback.

“I think it’s that level of attention to detail across our stores that is driving the success of the business. We are certainly exceeding general retail performance in the current conditions and I think we’re sitting very well in comparison to our competitors,” said Mr Hartmann.

-ENDS-

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