60% of Shoppers Won't Pay Full Price. We Trained Them.

Episode 154 opens with the date, because you asked for it: Thursday 24 September. Mal is just back from eTail in Melbourne, where day one was all AI and day two was loyalty. R.M. Williams and Oz Hair & Beauty both argued that loyalty shouldn't mean handing out credits and killing your margin. Mal then admits he's a Qantas Platinum lifer with 1.8 million points.

The big one this week is KPMG's Retail Health Index. Six in ten Australian shoppers no longer buy at full price, and the index is expected to stay negative until the end of 2027. Mal and Alex talk about how retailers trained shoppers to wait for sales, and what to do about it. That includes keeping clearance stock out of your site search and product recommendations, giving customers a reason to buy at the start of summer, and running bundles and edits instead of yet another made-up sale.

• Coles put milk up 20c "for the farmers", stopped paying the farmers, and only took 10c back off.
• Meta's Muse AI agent lands in WhatsApp. Amazon blocks it, and Shopify switches on agentic checkout for every store.
• Premier Retail: Peter Alexander keeps growing on licensing and loyalty, while Smiggle drops $34M and closes 13% of its stores.
• KPMG's Retail Health Index: 60% of shoppers won't pay full price, costs keep rising, and the sale calendar keeps growing (Golden Week sales, anyone?).
• Larry Kestelman's Brand Collective buys Glue Store, The Dom and Running Bare. Is it a smart play or a clearance channel?
• KMD Brands posts a NZ$414M statutory loss that's mostly a Rip Curl write-down, while every brand in the group grew.