Alan Hirsch was recently invited to be one of the Key Note Speakers at the Annual Bosch World Tour Conference that took place in Istanbul, Turkey. He had the honour of being the only Guest Speaker from the African Continent at the event which also included addresses from retail operators in, amongst other countries in the Middle East and Asia, Russia and Saudi Arabia.
Allan proudly flew the South African flag when he addressed the audience. “We are a country of mixed cultures, races and religions, a country with 11 different official languages. People from around the world fly in and land in a world class airport, OR Tambo, and drive along express freeways into Sandton in Johannesburg to some of the most luxurious hotels you will find anywhere in the world. And when they find out the population of South Africa is 50 million people, South Africa must be the biggest untapped secret there is!” he said. “However,” he continued, the fact of the matter is of those 50 million people, the amount of people who pay tax in South Africa is very low and there are approximately 5 million people who can afford to buy luxury goods.”
Allan went on to tell an enthralled audience how Hirsch’s was born – from a service and repair shop to a billion rand company and the biggest independent appliance dealer in South Africa.
Commenting on their relationship with BSH, Allan said “When we started the store in store concept, which is now common practice in South Africa we noticed growth in certain brands that participated with us, needless to say BSH is one of them and they are very active in store as well as on exhibitions with us.
We do realise the influence our suppliers and they can have an influence on our business by assisting us or perhaps by ignoring us. I think sometimes we irritate our suppliers by making them go further than they would like to when it comes to a customer and having a happy returning customer.
One of the things that make Hirsch’s different to our competitors is our drive to educate the consumers about energy efficient products. When Enrico (Hoffman, Head of BSH in South Africa) came back to South Africa after his journey around Europe, he quickly identified the importance of focusing on certain product groupings and giving the consumer a choice of great products at a good, better, best price. The growth we have had with BSH in 2015 was phenomenal and I really believe it is because of the focus BSH has had on our customers. By offering us a well-priced product and one which is has got more features which we can easily sell up to has made an enormous difference in our sales.” Said Allan.
If you have a happy customer they will always come back to you and they will bring their friends and their relations with them, with the focus of BSH they have given us the opportunity to have happy customers because they have given us a quality product that will last and be dependable and for that.” He concluded.