Mike's Minute: Supie's fall means a lot of questions for the market

It's always a sad, old business when a half-decent idea doesn’t quite work out.  That's how it appears with Supie, the company and the start-up designed to shake up the supermarket game.  Now, it's important to remember we don’t know why they have gone into liquidation. Even if a business fails, it may say nothing about the economic environment, it may say nothing about the specific sector it operated in, or then again it may say a lot.  The reason it's interesting is because the supermarket game has got a lot of attention.  The supermarket game is a rip-off apparently, they make far too much money, they need upheaval and change, they need a grocery commissioner, they need the whole sector being busted up and the competition to roll on in and offer the cheap prices and choice we all long for.  Yet, Supie was supposed to be it.  Is it possible to suggest that the market isn't quite as it has been portrayed?  One of the ironies with Supie was the suppliers who wanted better prices from them. In that scenario is the tricky business of supplier to customer. Supie says "I'll give you a $1 to sell at $1.50 retail"  The supplier says "I want $1.25 because that's what the other guys pay". Can you blame the supplier? No you can't.  Can you blame the customer for not flocking to Supie? About 50,000 odd did but it clearly wasn’t enough.  It's sort of like Kiwibank. No one is stopping you banking there, its just not as many do as those at the big four  Why do we shop at the so-called duopoly when we are told it's not good value? Why are we trying to bust up a market we so openly support?  What did the grocery commissioner, or the previous Government, do apart from make a lot of noise to save Supie and those who want to be like Supie?  Is there actually room in the market for another player, or do we just wish there was? When the others come along, why don’t we leap all over them with our business?  Why, when allegedly we are crying out for competition, doesn’t the competition make a killing?  That’s a lot of questions for a market or industry, that is apparently so in need of reform.  Or is it? See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.