Lipstick showdown in Sydney – the impending rise of Sephora

Sephora is one the world’s largest cosmetic retail chains. With almost 2,000 stores in 29 countries, the French company is part of the Louis Vuitton luxury goods group and has annual revenues of €1.94 billion. And now for it’s next global expansion it has set its sights on Australia.

The company opened its first Australian flagship store in Sydney on 5th December 2014, just in time for the Christmas rush and Boxing day sales. The store is located at 188 Pitt Street Mall, in Sydney CBD’s main shopping district. This geographic choice is highly strategic, opposite big department stores (Myer & David Jones), next to fast-fashion poster-child Zara and a stone’s throw away from super-pharmacies (Soul Pattinson and Priceline) that along with the department stores – have long dominated the cosmetic and beauty sectors within the city’s centre, and indeed the rest of the country.

Choosing a Super Fund: Here’s The Data – An Analysis of The Superannuation Industry

03. Nov
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Superannuation
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4 Comments

EDITOR’S NOTE: If you don’t read any further, apply these rules of thumb we found by looking at 10 years of super performance:

Go with a fund that pays low fees, high fees is statistically correlated with worse performance.
Go with an industry fund, as more industry funds have historically outperformed retail funds.
And the fund that’s better than all the rest ironically is… REST. So you should start your search there.

In Australia, we all have money in our super. At 9.5% of your salary, it’s actually a lot of money that you probably don’t think about on a daily basis. But you probably should. On top of that, the law of time-value of money says a dollar today is worth more than a dollar tomorrow.

A critical player in all of this is the fund manager that looks after your money – or in other words your superannuation fund. And here’s the reason to care – depending on your choices here, it could mean the difference between doubling your money, or just keeping par. Retiring rich or perhaps relying on Government benefits.

Now, here’s the analysis.

How The iPhone 6 May Not Have Broken Sales Records in Australia

09. Oct
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Pocketbook Data
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5 Comments

Shortly after the launch of iPhone 6, Apple announced they had sold a record, 10 million units over the weekend. Of course, that number represents not just Australian sales but global sales.

In the wake of the October 16th launch of the new iPads, we were curious to see the effect of Apple launches on the retail spending landscape here in Australia, both for Apple itself as a retailer, and other retailers during this period.

Does The Opal Card Actually Save You Money?

Over the past few months, we have conducted a number of consumer investigations to help you save money without changing your lifestyle. Our Netflix and IKEA stories have been so well received that we’re continuing our series of investigations. Playing our role as the Mythbusters to your finances.

With the roll-out of the new Sydney transit card, Opal – we thought it was time to take an in-depth look at it.
Continue reading…

Pocketbook now reaches 100,000 Australians

Just over eighteen months ago, I sat down with Bosco over lunch and showed him what I had been working on in the late nights after my regular day job. After I was done, he said to me, “how can I get this?”. This became the start of our journey with Pocketbook.

Our vision was very clear – we wanted to change the way people discover and manage their finances. The current methods to do this today are still what you would consider ‘prehistoric’. We plan to change that.

With this in mind, I’m super excited to announce that we now help over 100,000 Australians with their finances. It was just over 6 months ago that we announced we had reached 50,000 Australians. That goal took us over a year to reach. We reached this goal in half that time and it doesn’t look like slowing.

It’s been an incredible journey so far. When Bosco and I quit our day jobs to give Pocketbook a go, we weren’t sure where we would end up. In that time, we moved out of my living room into a proper office in Surry Hills, went to Dubai to show the finance world what we had built, raised some money to keep the lights on, expanded the team to 5 people and now hitting our first 100,000 users.

Of course this would never have been possible without the support from all of our beloved users. Thank you to all of you for coming on board, from the bottom of our hearts.

We would love to hear how your experience with Pocketbook has been – please tell us in the comments below!

How The Government Uses Data To Influence You [A Case Study]

25. Jul
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Tax Tips
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5 Comments

Humor me with this:

A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?

If you answered, $0.10, you’d be surprised to find that it’s wrong. Seriously, do the (simple) math. The reality is that a majority of people get that question wrong.

Most people focus on the initial instinctual and emotional reaction to numbers, which may not always be the most appropriate response.

How Netflix Is Doing In Australia: 2 Stats That Should Scare Foxtel and Quickflix

Netflix is rumoured to enter Australia early next year (that was later confirmed), but that doesn’t stop a few enterprising Australians from accessing it now. Actually, it’s more than a few.

The article we linked to said up to 200,000 Australians signed up with the service. There are also many anecdotes about the popularity of Netflix in Australia in the forums and social media. So we decided to look deeper into the subject*.

Let’s start with the basics: stat 1 – market share.

How much does IKEA really overcharge Australians? Here's the data.

24. Jun
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Pocketbook Data
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8 Comments

There’s no shortage of coverage about how Australians pay more for the exact same product compared to their US counterparts.

We know, for example, that tech giants (like Apple and Microsoft) overcharge Australians for hardware. We also pay more for downloads. And if you look outside of tech, Australians pay more than Americans for just about anything – everything from fashion to watching a movie in a theatre.

This article is about another area in which we pay more: decorating our homes. With Australian house prices at sky-high levels, surely, we need a break in outfitting them you would think! … Apparently not. We’ll be diving deep into the data instead of using anecdotal examples so that we know exactly how much worse off we are.

The company we’ll be exploring? Australia’s most popular furniture company: IKEA.

If you are thinking of buying a piece of furniture (or anything) from IKEA, trust me, you’ll want to read this. We can save you, on average, 31% of your hard-earned dollars.