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e-commerce group celebrates five-year milestone; defies tough retail conditions with revenue projections of $250M for FY 2011/12

26 October 2011, Melbourne, Australia: CatchOfTheDay, Australia’s number one¹ online department store and operator of Scoopon.com.au, Australia’s leading² group buying site, as well as the online supermarket Groceryrun.com.au, today celebrated five years in business with its strongest September quarter on record, reporting year-to-date group revenues up 100 percent on September 2010 figures.

Defying tough retail conditions, the group says that it is on track to deliver revenues for FY 2011/12 of $250M, more than double its 2010/11 revenues of $120M – proving that its online discounting model is a winning formula for today’s time- and cash-poor consumer.

“Sales growth has been very strong across all businesses. It’s amazing when you think that we are on track to post revenues of $250M, which is more than a quarter of what Target recently reported ($835M). Not bad for an online retailing site started five years ago by two brothers. Just goes to show that often the simple ideas are often the strongest,” said co-founder Gabby Leibovich.

Sales growth isn’t the only area of the business which has reported gains. While most Australian retailers have shed online traffic, only CatchOfTheDay and the main Amazon portal have increased their share according Experian Hitwise August 2011 data, with CatchOfTheDay reporting a +7.09% increase in visits on 2010 figures.³

The e-commerce group is also seeing a steady increase in new members, with approximately 4,000 customers signing up each day. Collectively the group has more than 1.5 million members, with an item being purchased every 3 seconds 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week

“Five years ago we set out on a mission: to give Australians of all walks of life a reason to visit our site once per day by offering unbelievable bargains in every possible category. This year we've approached that goal faster than any previous year,” said Mr. Leibovich.

In June 2011, the group secured $80M in funding for a 40% share of the business from a consortium of investors including James Packer's CPH, Tiger Global and Andrew Basset from Seek. The deal is in the top 20 ecommerce deals⁴ of the year world wide, with CatchOfTheDay the only Australian representative.

In September 2011, the group launched its much-anticipated online supermarket, groceryrun.com.au. In its 5 weeks of operation, GroceryRun has delivered average revenues around $1.5M per week for the 2 day sale, with an average 20,000 orders being placed per week comprising an average 18 items.

The group has doubled its head count in the past year and currently employs around 300 people across the business. It has also made substantial investments in infrastructure and technology to support the e-commerce group’s rapid expansion.

“Investments have been geared towards improving service delivery and ensuring we have in place the people, infrastructure and technology platform to support our next phase of growth,” said Mr. Leibovich

In June the group opened a second 16,000m2 distribution facility and recently rolled out a new warehouse management system and cloud-based hosting platform to support faster delivery times and improved stability during big promotions.