Coles Down Down, Birkenstock Nail Polish & Temple & Webster's 30% Miss

Mal's back on home soil — briefly — and Alex is dodging the Adelaide rain. Episode 137 lands in a week the ACCC has had its biggest enforcement win in a decade, and the rest of the retail and ecom news has decided to fall in line: discount discipline, brand portfolio pruning, platform consolidation, and the cleanest live test yet of whether the AU consumer is genuinely pulling back, or just buying differently.

The headline this week is Coles — the Federal Court has officially ruled the Down Down program misled customers, and the implications travel well beyond the supermarket aisle. Every AU operator running was/now pricing should be auditing this week. We get into what the ruling actually says, how it changes BFCM planning, and the Klaviyo flow risk most operators haven't thought about. Plus: Country Road Group's five-brand Shopify migration and what it signals about platform monopoly risk, Temple & Webster's 30% earnings miss after choosing margin over volume, and Birkenstock launching nail polish (yes, really).

- Officeworks doubles down on permanent price cuts — round two, and specialty retailers competing in their space are running out of road

- LVMH offloads Marc Jacobs for up to US$1bn as Bernard Arnault declares 2026 "won't be simple" and luxury's biggest house starts pruning- Birkenstock launches its first colour cosmetics with five nail polish shades matched to its sandals — "here for the foot"

- Federal budget allocates $67.7m to the ACCC with Shein and Temu explicitly named in the crosshairs- Coles loses the Down Down case — what the ruling means for your was/now pricing, Klaviyo flows, and BFCM 2026 planning

- Country Road Group consolidates five brands onto Shopify, following Brand Collective's 19-brand move — and Mal's contrarian read on the platform homogenisation risk

- Temple & Webster takes a 30% earnings hit after pivoting to margin optimisation, and the market punishes the share price ~80% off its August peak