Wesfarmers today announced Catch will cease trading by the end of the financial year and Kmart will take over fulfilment centres
Interesting to see what they do with Catch mobile
https://www.wesfarmers.com.au/investor-centre/company-perfor…
Update: the Catch website homepage states that trading will cease as of 30 April 2025.
Yeah, no surprise they close down given the amount of overpriced junk they list with incomprehensible browsing criteria. The lads building the platform must've laughed themselves out the door when wesfarmer decided to take their shit. It's a bit of ironic reading through ozbargain review of their corporate office visit when they promoted their to be jelly corporate culture and compare that to what they sell but that's probably the only highlight, just to suck in the naives.
Wesfarmers achieved a goal which is to buy out competition on the cheap and then shut it down.
Plenty of companies get bought out and the owners lose interest running them.
Nothing was achieved by Wesfarmers.
Catch of the day owners became rich. Wesfarmers shareholders lost almost half a billion.
Last year alone catch lost 96 million
Catch would have gone bankrupt if it is not bought by wesfarmers
Temu, shein and aliexpress killing local businesses.
It was pure stupidity by wesfarmers board.
Who all made money in that deal is still questionable.
@Wiser: Woolworths bought MyDeal and lets see when that goes out of business.
Even BigW is losing money for Woolworths.
The best trade was Wesfarmers buying Coles Myer then demerging Myer and Coles then flogging it off for a profit.
@netjock: Next one is API/ PRICELINE
Letus see how is that going to go especially after Sigma/CWH mergerAlso WOW does this sort of mimicking
Remember the Masters venture?
It was bad management/ execution as Masters would have been a success in 40 Billion monopoly.
The best trade was Wesfarmers buying Coles Myer then demerging Myer and Coles then flogging it off for a profit.
That never happened in this universe - Wesfarmers never owned Myer.
In 2006, Coles Myer sold off Myer and changed its name to Coles Group Limited, retaining ownership of Kmart, Target and Officeworks as well as the liquor businesses.
It was a year later, in 2007, that Wesfarmers purchased Coles Group Limited.
That never happened in this universe
Doesn't matter which universe. Still dogs. Only thing that really worked out so far is probably Officeworks. Kmart basically offset by losses at Target.
Kmart sells some stationary cheaper than Officeworks so there is some overlap there. They'll forever be tripping over each other.
Last I checked, they don't own amazon.
Wowsa - I still remember waiting up until midnight just to see what the next day's drop was
when their stuff used to actually be good
Once upon the time we used to have a script refreshing those one-deal-a-day sites — Zazz, Catch of the Day, etc.
Hahah, that would have been groundbreaking at the time
I miss those days, they were the peak of Ozb and the special bargains. We hadnt experienced anything like that till then. All these one a day sales with the idea of having an item being sold for a cheaper than normal price when bought and sold in bulk.
Yep, then you had DealExtreme for the cheap overseas random stuff
@spackbace: Oh yeah! I loved DX back in the day, long before AliExpress was even the germ of an idea. I bought a ton of stuff from there.
RIP Zazz and One-day/One-day Tee
RIP Zyzz
Zazz!
Catch Of The Day was pretty great in the early days. Yes it just copied Zazz which copied woot, and it didn't have the humorous writeups/forum/community presence Zazz did, but they pretty quickly surpassed them in quality of goods. I miss talking to other weirdos at midnight.
Still remember how shocking it was one day to see them jump from SD cards and bedding sets and random USB powered crap, to 52" Series 6 Samsung LCDs (back when Series 6 was the highest model, and 52" considered huge) for crazy cheap compared to JB Hifi.
and it didn't have the humorous writeups/forum/community presence Zazz did
And the steady stream of "goodnight" posts for each daily thread.
Someone should bring back this model. It can’t be a big company. Has to be a new startup
Yep. Good times.
No zazz for me tonight
Someone predicted that in the thread about companies likely closing in 2025….
https://www.ozbargain.com.au/comment/16062242/redir
Catch. Seems like Catch, Kmart and Target all compete in a similar space. Probably would be better to consolidate them. I'd see Catch being merged into Kmart & Target
All hail our community manager @neil
@neil - you called it
I'm regularly getting catch deliveries in kmart boxes and vice-versa.
@jv: No, I'm refusing to use the contents and just wallowing here in my own suffering and self pity that I didn't get the shipping box I was expecting.
Imagine all the high paid consultants that came up with that when they could have just checked OzBargain.
you need to start a mini newsletter or something
they should have paid you
Do you have tonight's lotto numbers?
The thechnofeudalist illusion of choice.
With catch going down they're actually less technofeudal - Kmart and Target are old-school retailers with relatively steady product lines.
@neil ed it !!
remember when 'catch' was catchoftheday
catchoftheday is still head canon for me
Now it's "Find a catch in the piles and piles of junk"
Yes and I remember when they had their special birthday deals with cheap wii's and stuff which always crashed their site, googling about that led me to find Ozbargain
We used to call it crapoftheday.
Still got my old eeepc that I got for $400 in 2009?
Felt amazing taking it on holidays back in the day
I recently commented to a much younger colleague that I remember when it was just 1 deal per day and they were like 'wait what?'.
I worked there for 10 years. I left soon after Wesfarmers bought it. Wesfarmers/Kmart mishandled everything so poorly that it makes me wonder if it was intentional or just pure incompetence.
Probably both.. Worked for Dick Smith before and after the acquisition. They dropped the ball there. I reckon you'd still have some form of DS if they didn't own it.
Ugh, I confused my Westfarmers with my Woolworths. I'm still on holidays…
You and me both!
Dropped the 'ol dick and ball
Did you go down the slide?
You need to start AMA thread, lots of people would be interested. Especially if you are QQQ.
What is QQQ?
COTD sales representative at that time that posted on OzBargain frequently
No you are right. I watched Telstra buy a company called ooyala for 300 million and writing it off to zero.
They also bought the AltaVista search engine, rebadged as Go Eureka. That sank like a stone.
eureka.com is a cracker name for a search engine.
I miss AltaVista, it was ground breaking at the time, miles better than Yahoo and Excite.
Their webpage translation capabilities blew me away at the time.
If Wesfarmers didn't have Bunnings they'd be done.
They royally screwed the expansion of Bunnings to the UK, they didn't know how to manage Catch but Bunnings is so dominant it doesn't really matter what they do.
I think people are starting to wake up to Bunnings, their prices are pretty terrible for a lot of things, $30 for a gate hinge doesn't make any sense.
They already priced out most of the competition and only drop prices when something remotely related from Aldi is on sale… to what they should be sold for without the Gouging
Catch of the day, the original scam website and price jackers.
Does anyone know of anything that is exclusively available on Catch?
Generally I've noticed that it's largely the same listings as Woolworths Marketplace or Bunnings Marketplace or Ozsale but I'm assuming there's some things on Catch that will need to find a new home?
not exclusively but there's some 18+ only content on catch
Giggity
18+ only content on catch
And we cant catch anything from using them
Plenty of the Chinese companies listing products on Woolworths/Bunnings/Big W marketplace are also listing the same on American sites like Walmart. They have dozens of stores across different marketplaces around the world. It's good easy money.
Actually I think the main thing on Catch that isn't readily available on those other marketplaces is clearance products from major Aussie brands? Maybe Ozsale will have that market covered
Cheap for dishwasher detergent.
I presume they will just sell off the mobile customers
Used to love catchoftheday. Sad to see their decline and ultimate demise.
me: oh wow, i got onepass now , i can finally justify getting stuff via catch too
also me: wow, i have not seen one deal that wasn't a discontinued/ random variant of something nobody wants/ was way cheaper elsewhere or direct through the supplier
There was an occasional good Lego deal from Target via Catch in recent times. But overall seems they gave up on the online bargain retail business model over 18 months ago and just became a Kmart and Target shipper.
Godspeed
Havent checked catch in few years.. it was full of rubbish and no real deals.
I miss the days of zazz, etc when they were genuine one-deal-a-day
RIP you were one of the sites of all time.
No more cheap Catch Mobile :(
Kmart mobile?
catchconnect is unaffected
Important Update
Catch Connect Mobile is owned and run separately from Catch.com.au, and is not impacted by the recent announcement that Catch.com.au will cease trading effective 30 April 2025.We will continue to offer great value products and exceptional customer service, as we always have.
There will be no changes to your Catch Connect Mobile services, and we will continue to operate as usual.
New customers can still purchase our new great value plans from catchconnect.com.au.
Existing customers can continue to use and recharge their services without disruption.
If you have any questions, please chat to us online.
To add onto this, I'm fairly certain Catch Connect is essentially whitelabelled Optus mobile. So essentially Catch have a deal with Optus to run an MVNO with a Catch sticker on it. Same goes for Coles Mobile.
https://www.optus.com.au/prepaid/sim-plans
If you actually look at the website designs, it's very clear that they are the same, just lightly modified with different colours corresponding to the outward facing brand names.
The offerings for Optus prepaid SIMs are also suspiciously similar to Catch and Coles.
I'm predicting it gets rolled into Officeworks and rebranded OW mobile.
Well, I received an e-mail from Catch Connect regarding the Catch closure. "Catch Connect Mobile is owned and run separately from Catch.com.au."
At the bottom: Optus Mobile Pty Ltd (ABN 65 054 365 696) trading as “Catch Connect”
Anko Mobile
Honestly I’m surprised this is not a thing
Kmarts already flooded the market with cheap but mostly decent stuff for the money, why not mobile lol
i lol'd
Bring back the Audiosonic brand. Audiosonic phones and tablets with Anko mobile.
And Aero Atlas hoodies.
ROFL
Wow - that would actually be a very clever re-brand.
i use catch for lots of grocery items that amazon no longer delivers to me (eg quilton 48 packs) :(
maybe that's why they are closing down.
Orders from regional areas are never profitable.
I used to check Catch Of The Day every day. Then they dropped the deals and it felt like a drop shipping site. Haven't bothered to visit for over six years now.
What pisses me off the most is that they have items on their website that's never in stock…. So when you search for something that you finally think is available you just find out it's been out of stock for years
Although catch wasn't the greatest, they were occasionally the cheapest and anything that reduces competition in the online market is not a good thing.
Bought some cheap kids Asics and Nike shoes from them before but I can never be sure if they were genuine. Just like buying from Kogan.
jv on 21/01/2025 - 09:19 Comment score below threshold.
