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Speaker 1: Interesting read on shopping habits. Quevybank thinks spending on sites

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Speaker 1: like Timu and Shine could be stabilizing, But boy, that's

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Speaker 1: made the impact there, hasn't it. So when you look

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Speaker 1: at imports of small cheap goods, they're up by a

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Speaker 1: third last year, more than double in the past five years.

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Speaker 1: First Retail Group Managing director Chris Wilkinson's well this Chris,

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Speaker 1: very good morning to you.

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Speaker 2: Good morning Mike.

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Speaker 1: So what you read, it's stabilized at what a high level.

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Speaker 1: It's here to stay. It is what it is.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, Often as a consumers are getting accustomed to

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Speaker 2: this and it's becoming a pattern.

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Speaker 1: Is it segment or sector specific or just you can

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Speaker 1: buy anything on it and a certain percentage of people do.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Team Who's reach is particularly strong in small items,

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Speaker 2: those variety type items, the likes of the products the

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Speaker 2: warehouse are selling. But then we've got Shine as well,

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Speaker 2: which is in terms of categories, that's your apparel category.

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Speaker 1: Right. The whole argument they're doing this in Australia with

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Speaker 1: their election campaign at the moment, buying Australia and being

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Speaker 1: patriotic and stuff, is that dead in the water. Initially

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Speaker 1: you can say it and everyone goes, oh, yes, I

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Speaker 1: like to support, but in reality, we buy cheap. We

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Speaker 1: love cheap, and that's the beginning, middle and end of it.

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Speaker 2: Pre Mikes through COVID, we saw that strength of local support,

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Speaker 2: but that only lasted for so long. Price is really

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Speaker 2: a big driver for people.

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Speaker 1: Do you know anything about the deminimus thing. You know,

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Speaker 1: in America they've had this great debate. Are we missing

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Speaker 1: out on tremendous amounts of tax in this country by

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Speaker 1: bringing in stuff we could buy here?

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Speaker 2: Yeah, there is an argument for that. I mean, we

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Speaker 2: are charging GST on these products, so at least the

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Speaker 2: government is getting some bite at the apple.

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Speaker 1: Okay, once you read on retail at the moment we

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Speaker 1: sing light at the end of the tunnel or not.

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Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there are some glimmers. It's still very tough,

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Speaker 2: but I think that you know, we've got the government

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Speaker 2: spending again now and that's been a really important thing.

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Speaker 1: Okay, good on you, Chris. Appreciate time. Chris Wilkinson, First

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Speaker 1: Retail Group Managing For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,

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Speaker 1: listen live to news talks that'd be from six am weekdays,

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