Jul
29
In the next five days, Starbucks announced Tuesday, it will close 61 locations in Australia, three quarters of all the Starbuckses down under.
CEO Howard Schultz explained the retreat by attributing it to “challenges unique to the Australian market,” which was intriguing, so I read several online articles about it.
What’s unique about the Australian market turns out to be that Australians are fussy about their coffee, there is a thriving market of small rivals to Starbucks, and word-of-mouth abounds about which local competition is cheaper, better or both.
That could happen here.
A friend of mine predicted 20 years ago that the Next Big Thing in this market space will be the reinvention of English high tea at tea bars. I still hope this happens.
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Hi Howard,
I caught your piece on Starbucks this morning. Not only does Australia have a highly competitive coffee market, but when Sbux rolls out a new product, as they did 2 weeks ago, it goes first to the North American market for 6 mos. and then to international. The Australian coffee cos. have ample time to copy this product, so by the time Sbux rolls it out, it is old hat. This has been their problem since they entered the Aussie market. It takes a lot of T-crossing and I-dotting to bring a new product to the international marketplace. And how do I know this? My daughter works at Sbux corporate and has been involved in a lot of international work. Just thought you might like more info…Aloha,
Wendy