Once a small, upmarket supplier of men’s casual shoes and a few selected garments for the mature well-to-do, it has transformed itself into a roaring flood of budget merchandise for all ages and genders. Rivers currently has some 165 stores. 45 are in NSW, 50 are in Victoria, 34 in Queensland, 19 in W.A., 10 in S.A., five in Tasmania and two in the NT. Although they can be found in a few better shopping centres, they mostly favour the likes of DFOs or shopping strips where the rents are low and the attraction of cheap prices is high.
Most interesting about Rivers is not its merchandise or marketing, but the cloak of secrecy that hangs over it. There is one telephone number for the ‘head office’ and it is seldom answered. Mostly, callers get a recorded message saying that the place is just too busy to take the call and please try again later when, guess what, they’re still too busy.
Of the total 165 stores, nine are ‘concept’ and the rest ‘clearance’. This begs the question of how nine stores can have enough goods gushing through them to need another 156 to clear the stuff.
Obviously, Rivers is playing the game of the wounded (but not really) beast, offering its customers what appears to be desperately reduced stock. In actual fact, the company is a red hot buyer in China, not afraid to place orders for heart-stopping quantities to get a price that can’t be bettered by any other Australian vertical retailer. Its Chinese sourced and well made men’s shirts, for example, cost around $4.50, land at $6.50 and retail at $9.95. To get that kind of deal Rivers needs to buy 50,000 - which takes balls.
In addition to administration offices, the company has a ‘factory’ in Ballarat - but making what? I can’t think of any item in the Rivers offer that could be made competitively in Australia. I guess the once-was-factory has morphed into a warehouse with a shop tacked on to the front - even though Rivers states blandly on a rare nugget of internet information: “our products are made up of discounted stock from our Retail Concept stores as well as a range of samples and seconds from our factory in Ballarat”. It continues: “Every few weeks we review our prices, and we also receive stock from our Concept stores. These prices don’t last very long as people quickly realise what a bargain it is and snap it up.”
Obviously, some suppliers know who the Rivers executives are, but this information is not bandied about. Most retailers spill the beans on their websites, but not Rivers. All it wants the world to know is where its stores are and how good the merchandise deal is for customers. It is in the habit of running four-day specials in which already low prices zoom down close to cost. Customers are urged to rush in, fortified by the warning: “Your local store may have lots or may have none”.
The amusingly angry website www.notgoodenough.org sometimes takes the stick to Rivers over certain advertised goods not being available, or confusion over which garments repose in which racks, but that’s par for the course in any retail operation. One dear old granny took her two grandsons to Rivers to buy three-dollar t-shirts and flew into a rage when she couldn’t find any. Rivers stoically plays a dead bat to such outbursts by gently reminding customers that they are already getting more than they are paying for.
Prior to the beginning of November, about the only issue that drew the management from the shadows was criticism over its advertising campaign last year when it showed an image of a presumably dead woman’s legs to express the killer nature of its deals.
But on 4 November came the stirring announcement that the sole owner of Rivers, 54-year-old Philip Harry Goodman, had been accused by a female employee of touching her breasts and bottom, of requiring her to provide private modelling of underwear, of asking her to wear glasses covertly fitted with cameras to photograph competitors’ products, and accompany him to lunch.
This is an unfortunate way for Philip to attract the attention of the media unless, when his case comes to court next year, he can dress those involved in Rivers clobber.
Of course, the media is already having a field day, especially after the breathtaking events of Mark and Kirsty’s run-in – although Philip is accused of more salacious activities than the bra snapping Mark.
The alleged victim is 30-year-old Sallyanne Robinson, who worked at Rivers’ Melbourne head office in Hawthorn between September 2009 and July 2010. My first reaction to Philip’s tribulations is, ‘hey, what about those glasses?’. If he could become the Australian distributor he could have a roaring trade selling them to Australian retailers and apparel suppliers who regularly go overseas looking for good styles to knock off. We all know that you get thrown out of stores the minute you produce a camera and even holding up your mobile phone to take pictures is becoming detectable. But you’d never get sprung with pair of camera-specs. Look, shoot, and look away. Maybe an advanced model comes with a blink-operated shutter.
Fraser McEwing founded Ragtrader in 1972. As must be obvious, he was a minor at the time, but had a prodigious talent for writing editorial that informed, yet enraged people in the fashion industry – a quality that hasn’t changed.
Wendell Levi Teodoro @Zeduce
