Earlier this year I went to Bunnings to get a whole bunch of...

Earlier this year I went to Bunnings to get a whole bunch of storm water PVC pipes, fittings and related items. It was a complicated job geometrically, and so i needed a variety of bends (90 deg, 45 deg, 15 deg and so on) and T-pieces etc to navigate the discharge route.

As I'm not a plumber and as I don't normally do this sort of thing, I assumed my needs would be adequately met by a trip to Bunnings.

Well, despite the substantial real-estate dedicated to plumbing, at Bunnings, and the seeming plethora and variety of parts, I had trouble finding what i needed. When I asked an assistant for help, her almost immediate answer was that I would be better off going to Reece.

Well, I did go to Reece, and a whole new world of options opened up to me, and the assistant was knowledgeable to boot. If I'd gone straight to Reece in the first place, I would have saved myself substantial time and probably expense too.

So I ask myself, how likely is Bunnings to compete with that? How much more real-estate will they have to dedicate to the task? How much time, effort, training, logistics will be involved? I compare this to say, power tools. By comparison plumbing involves enormous variety, a lot of space relative to inventory cost, and a lot of complexity. Hence high real-estate to revenue. High complexity to revenue. High training to revenue.

I think Bunnings would rather focus elsewhere.

This is why Reece's constant investment in inventory, logistics, systems and training, is so valuable.