Community stores aren’t doomed to failure
ABDIssue 5 - 24 Apr 2002 PERTH:
Source: http://www.nit.com.au//Business/story.aspx?id=365
A West Australian businessman who has been running community stores since the 1980s believes he has the answer to a problem which has plagued remote communities for decades.
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Managing Director of Aboriginal Business Development P/L, a Perth-based company which contracts as a service provider to nine community stores throughout Western Australia.
His company manages the community stores after securing an agreement with the owners of the store, generally the local community council.In the 14 years Mr Fitzpatrick and his company have been involved in community store management, no client has ever gone out of business.
“We’ve been doing this since 1988 and in that time no store under our management has ever failed,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.“That’s not to say we don’t have our share of problems from time-to-time, we do.“But there’s absolutely no doubt our system works.”
The strength of Mr Fitzpatrick’s consultancy is multi-pronged, he says.Community stores enjoy greater purchasing power by being involved in a buying group of sorts. That brings lower prices to the consumers through cheaper goods and reduced freight costs.And Mr Fitzpatrick says his stores are strictly financially controlled with each site featuring state-of-the-art financial tracking systems.
“This gives us greater control over money going into and coming out of the store and it makes our ordering a lot more accurate and efficient,” he said.
It also has the added benefit of providing an accurate source of information on the sorts of foods Indigenous communities are consuming, with obvious benefits to local health service providers.What Mr Fitzpatrick can’t understand is why - given the latest media storm over ‘book-up’ and recent comments by South Australian ATSIC Commissioner Brian Butler that some communities were being bled dry - he has never been consulted.
“I agree with him (Butler). I’ve always indicated that we know what the problems are,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.“The problems are articulated consistently over the years - everybody knows what the bloody problems are. The issue is how in the hell do we fix it?
“If the ABD store management model is shown to be best practise ATSIC should make it their business to find out how in the hell it works.
“They should be strong advocates of a similar model because they’re supposed to embrace best practice.”But Mr Fitzpatrick is most critical of the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, which recently launched a ‘best practice model’ for community stores in Alice Springs.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the ACCC model was a motherhood statement with no relevance for remote communities.“I’ve obviously read with some interest what [Professor] Allan Fels (the head of the ACCC) and his agency has put forward.“It’s rhetoric... it’s absolutely unhelpful in the situations that we practically face on the ground.“It’s like me saying, “The thing you should do is put all of the money that you have made for the week in the safe, and then bank it.“Sounds great, but how in hell do you put it into practice. How do you make sure you’ve got an effective system in place?”
Mr Fitzpatrick was also critical of the ACCC’s fear of book up, claiming that if run properly it was an honest and much-needed system in remote communities.“Another ACCC motherhood statement is you’ve got to manage your book down. I know that.
“Another thing they said was don’t give your keycard and pin number to anybody.
“We don’t accept that. In our stores there are a lot of pensioners who want their keycards and pin held in the store safely because invariably their cards aren’t safe at home - they’re stolen.
“We never, ever put in the pin numbers but we encourage it as a way of assisting people to budget their income because then they’re more likely to use a good proportion of their income on food.
“If you’re a manager and doing manual book down you’re the God, you decide. It’s open to abuse. No question.
“But we haven’t got a black book where we write in the amount a person has booked down. When a person buys good out of store we make them sign the till slip for the book down for that day.
“All the till slips that have been signed by the person are put in a tin for that month. If a person says look, I did not book down last week, or I did not book down in the first week in month we just go through the tin.
“We can not only find the slip they signed, but tell them exactly what they purchased that week.”
Mr Fitzpatrick said despite all the inquiries and investigations into the problems confronting community stores, no government department has ever asked for ABD’s input into effective store management.
“We’re open for people to come and investigate us and our system - we have no problems with that at all.“We’re happy for people to go through our books provided the Aboriginal community which owns the store has no objections.
“This is the model that works and we know it works.“There’s been no attempt over all of these years to call us in and give us a forum.
“They can pull us to bits if they want to, but give us the forum and give us the opportunity of talking to them about our stores management program and the successes within that program.
“ATSIC are just too shy to make that call.”
Source: http://www.nit.com.au//Business/story.aspx?id=365
A West Australian businessman who has been running community stores since the 1980s believes he has the answer to a problem which has plagued remote communities for decades.
Brian Fitzpatrick is the Managing Director of Aboriginal Business Development P/L, a Perth-based company which contracts as a service provider to nine community stores throughout Western Australia.
His company manages the community stores after securing an agreement with the owners of the store, generally the local community council.In the 14 years Mr Fitzpatrick and his company have been involved in community store management, no client has ever gone out of business.
“We’ve been doing this since 1988 and in that time no store under our management has ever failed,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.“That’s not to say we don’t have our share of problems from time-to-time, we do.“But there’s absolutely no doubt our system works.”
The strength of Mr Fitzpatrick’s consultancy is multi-pronged, he says.Community stores enjoy greater purchasing power by being involved in a buying group of sorts. That brings lower prices to the consumers through cheaper goods and reduced freight costs.And Mr Fitzpatrick says his stores are strictly financially controlled with each site featuring state-of-the-art financial tracking systems.
“This gives us greater control over money going into and coming out of the store and it makes our ordering a lot more accurate and efficient,” he said.
It also has the added benefit of providing an accurate source of information on the sorts of foods Indigenous communities are consuming, with obvious benefits to local health service providers.What Mr Fitzpatrick can’t understand is why - given the latest media storm over ‘book-up’ and recent comments by South Australian ATSIC Commissioner Brian Butler that some communities were being bled dry - he has never been consulted.
“I agree with him (Butler). I’ve always indicated that we know what the problems are,” Mr Fitzpatrick said.“The problems are articulated consistently over the years - everybody knows what the bloody problems are. The issue is how in the hell do we fix it?
“If the ABD store management model is shown to be best practise ATSIC should make it their business to find out how in the hell it works.
“They should be strong advocates of a similar model because they’re supposed to embrace best practice.”But Mr Fitzpatrick is most critical of the Australian Consumer and Competition Commission, which recently launched a ‘best practice model’ for community stores in Alice Springs.
Mr Fitzpatrick said the ACCC model was a motherhood statement with no relevance for remote communities.“I’ve obviously read with some interest what [Professor] Allan Fels (the head of the ACCC) and his agency has put forward.“It’s rhetoric... it’s absolutely unhelpful in the situations that we practically face on the ground.“It’s like me saying, “The thing you should do is put all of the money that you have made for the week in the safe, and then bank it.“Sounds great, but how in hell do you put it into practice. How do you make sure you’ve got an effective system in place?”
Mr Fitzpatrick was also critical of the ACCC’s fear of book up, claiming that if run properly it was an honest and much-needed system in remote communities.“Another ACCC motherhood statement is you’ve got to manage your book down. I know that.
“Another thing they said was don’t give your keycard and pin number to anybody.
“We don’t accept that. In our stores there are a lot of pensioners who want their keycards and pin held in the store safely because invariably their cards aren’t safe at home - they’re stolen.
“We never, ever put in the pin numbers but we encourage it as a way of assisting people to budget their income because then they’re more likely to use a good proportion of their income on food.
“If you’re a manager and doing manual book down you’re the God, you decide. It’s open to abuse. No question.
“But we haven’t got a black book where we write in the amount a person has booked down. When a person buys good out of store we make them sign the till slip for the book down for that day.
“All the till slips that have been signed by the person are put in a tin for that month. If a person says look, I did not book down last week, or I did not book down in the first week in month we just go through the tin.
“We can not only find the slip they signed, but tell them exactly what they purchased that week.”
Mr Fitzpatrick said despite all the inquiries and investigations into the problems confronting community stores, no government department has ever asked for ABD’s input into effective store management.
“We’re open for people to come and investigate us and our system - we have no problems with that at all.“We’re happy for people to go through our books provided the Aboriginal community which owns the store has no objections.
“This is the model that works and we know it works.“There’s been no attempt over all of these years to call us in and give us a forum.
“They can pull us to bits if they want to, but give us the forum and give us the opportunity of talking to them about our stores management program and the successes within that program.
“ATSIC are just too shy to make that call.”
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