Scuttled Retravision stores offload stock

E-commerce site GraysOnline will sell more than 8,000 items from three closed down Retravision stores in a receivers auction starting today. 

The online retailer said it will hold a series of auctions over the next fortnight, with items being grouped into relevant categories. 

The two-week sale will include a range of IT products, including laptops, desktop PCs, wireless printers, tablet docking stations and myriad gadgets. On sale from 1pm today are cooktops, ovens, and rangehoods.

"Basically, you'll be able to buy pretty much anything you can find at a Retravision store," Fenton Healy of GraysOnline told CRN.  

"There's a lot of stock to get through; around $1 million in retail value. There's going to be a whole series of sales that will be running consequtively and closing at different times. It'll probably take about two weeks to get through it all," Healy said.

Approximately 35 percent of the stock will have a nationwide delivery option. Healy said that "bulkier" products would need to be picked up from the GraysOnline warehouse in Cheltenham, Victoria.

Healy expected the auction to generate interest from both the private and trade sectors. 

"We're selling stock unreserved, so it'll appeal to pretty much everyone; from people thinking about commercial applications for their business to organisations planning to resell things themselves," Healy said.   

The Southern arm of the Retravision group, which owns 104 stores in Victoria, southern New South Wales and Tasmania, went into administration in May this year following a general decline in retail sales. 

"From the wholesalers' point of view, they weren't getting enough stock through their system into the stores," explained GraysOnline's Chris Leeds. 

"The three stores effectively owed money to the wholesaler, and the administrators on behalf of the wholesale company have appointed receivers of those three stores. [National chartered accountant] Rodgers Reidy then called us up to clear the stores out and sell it online."

Retravision Southern's receivership woes are not uncommon in today's struggling retail sector.

Woolworths in January announced it would close 100 of 386 underperforming Dick Smith stores across Australia and New Zealand over the next two years through a staged restructure due to a long period of declining sales.