Michael Ford

This is an interview with Michael Ford from April 2013. Here's a link to Michael Ford's 2014 interview.

As technology and e-commerce continue to transform the industry, CEO Michael Ford has led The Good Guys into a new age of prosperity and growth. Over the past nine years, he has quickly identified and utilised industry trends and adapted the retail giant’s platform to accommodate rapidly changing consumer needs. Michael states that the consumer electronics (CE) industry has gone through the most dramatic cyclical and structural changes of any retail sector.

“Consumer electronics and technology is one of the first retail sectors to feel the brunt of e-commerce,” he says. “If you don’t have an integrated bricks-and-mortar and e-commerce strategy, you are increasingly vulnerable in this market.

“David Jones says the one factor negatively affecting their results is home appliances and consumer electronics, and they will likely quit the categories soon, as Myer has done. If you look at the UK, former marker leader Comet has just gone out of business. Even Best Buy—the USA’s largest CE specialty retailer—will be criticised when its history is evaluated. They were a late entrant into effective use of e-commerce, and their performance was drastically undermined by Amazon.”

While some retailers have failed to meet changing industry standards and expectations, The Good Guys has embraced the e-commerce change. “Over the past 12 to 15 years, e-commerce has emerged from what many Australian retailers believed to be a convenient novelty to become the largest contributor to retail sales growth,” Michael says.