European Home Retail Share Discussion Threads

[the analyst] 13/7/2006 14:53

What interests me is that they own a couple of great internet trading companies, kitbag and iwoot.

They have not managed these well either and messed up the Christmas trading. Mind you, asos did the same two years ago at a similar stage of development and have been going great-guns since.

I think the value here is in the internet trading division and I wonder if they intend to take it private to get them in their own hands?

[tonyx] 13/7/2006 13:37

the analyst,

Agree. I can only see dilution ahead for shareholders and as you say, every drop in the share price will adversly affect the terms of the financing.

How it could go so wrong in 12 months is a mystery especially as Ideal Shopping (IDS) seem to be doing OK.

[the analyst] 13/7/2006 13:31

I'm not sure about price targets, but I agree it's not looking good Tonyx.

Every day without news of funding is bad news and every drop in share price means that the terms of funding are likely to be getting worse and worse for investors. The other possibility is that they do not get the funding and have to close or sell-off parts of the company.

Investors here really need some news.

[tonyx] 13/7/2006 13:25

Oh dear! 10p looks like a realistic target in the short term.

[ygor] 30/6/2006 15:41

LOL, quiet here. Have all the rampers cut their losses?


'the Group's voucher provider, Choice, went into administration earlier
this year. The result of this has been a change in the environment in the
voucher marketplace. The likely effect of this is that future payment terms for
vouchers will be less advantageous than in the past. Such a change in payment
terms would give rise to an Autumn peak borrowing requirement substantially
higher than in previous years and above current bank facilities.


The Board is exploring all options to arrange additional financing for this peak
period.'

[skintvestor] 14/6/2006 19:19

It`s the economy, stupid!!!!!!!

[fusebox] 14/6/2006 19:14

Another gutter paulypilot stock...LOL

[fusebox] 13/6/2006 12:53

New low and further to go...down !.

[skintvestor] 09/6/2006 14:17

Actually, these went lower than this in 2003. they bounced back then and they`ll bounce back again. IMHO

[fusebox] 09/6/2006 12:30

Hanging on its lows now and ready for another new low.

[she-ra] 23/5/2006 14:10

fusebox - Im sure not all of his stocks are suffering.Im sure he has a well spread out portfolio.

Why do you have it in for PP?

[fusebox] 23/5/2006 13:50

Grim.

All pps stocks suffering.

[she-ra] 23/5/2006 12:49

THe fall continues.

[fusebox] 21/5/2006 22:29

paulypilot admits to having recently dumped a lot of his poorer performing stocks so i reckon he has loppped a lot of his holdings in this stock...

[bird of dawning] 19/5/2006 03:14

OK....so whats your point? Is my positive criticism of the Kleeneze networking opportunity promotional policy, an invitation to bring in the political `heavy hitters'!? Of course direct selling is a big part of our domestic market.

As to the merit of EHR as a value investment, well, their net profit of around 1.5% is back in the black and the operating profit is reasonable at 3.8%. However, please note that they seem to be permanently saddled with negative working capital (i.e. they're strapped for cash). The total amount of negative working capital is around 50% greater than their total market capitalisation.......oh what! Furthermore they also have not NAV......but NLV!

Perhaps Tony Blair should be brought back in to woo new investors at the next annual general meeting!....I'm confident he'll do a great pitch! Though he might also want to bring Gordon Brown with him, to benefit from his renowned forensic skills, to polish up the EHR balance sheet (and reassure the electorate?!).

As an ex Kleeneze mlm'er, I'm very aware that they have a great rapport with the UK public, but its time to adapt. Their catalogue customers are clearly their greatest resource, why not get them on board as distributors too? Now that the majority of homes in the UK have a computer that catalogue should be on it 100%.
Regards
bod

[skintvestor] 18/5/2006 08:52

Well at least Tony Blair supports this business!!!

Special message
A message from The Prime Minister The Rt Hon Tony Blair MP
to the Direct Selling Association.

"I'm delighted to offer my support to the Direct Selling Association and to point out to you how big a part direct selling is of our domestic market in the sale of goods and services.

We've got something like 13% of the entire home shopping market done by direct selling, almost half a million people are involved in direct selling and 40,000 of those are doing it full time. So there are tremendous opportunities for women who want to combine family responsibilities and work. It also shows how, in a changing economy and changing labour market, there are great new opportunities out there.

I want to say to you both that this is a good thing to be involved in and that we, as a Government, recognise the tremendous contribution that people who are taking up direct selling opportunities can make to the overall prosperity of the economy. So it is well worth doing, well worth being involved in and I wish those of you who are engaged in it, the very best for the future".

The above is the text of a video message given to members of the Direct Selling Association on the occasion of the DSA's Annual Conference held at Hinckley, Leicestershire on 5 - 6 May 1999.

Original document found at the Direct Selling Association.

[bird of dawning] 17/5/2006 22:24

I've been a distributor for Kleeneze, back during the 1990's. Then I built up a very loyal retail customer base with them, over 4/5 years. Kleeneze are quite right when they claim that the catalogue does the selling for you. There's a natural `warm market' out there. I used to get single orders of well over £100 faxed through.

So what went wrong? Well, of course you could then find up to 30% of orders that you'd worked so hard to obtain were out of stock. But the main problem was more strategic......mlm companies like to claim that retailing `gives you confidence'....presumably to sponsor new distributors into the wholesaling side and to expand the network.......become a business builder....a big hitter!

However, and Hamster Ape's point about people not seeing the bigger picture is right on the button. I guess the most sacred word in mlm is....(wait for it!)....DUPLICATION! These catalogue retail customers were quite happy to see their regular Kleeneze agent delivering to their door with a smiling face! However, in all those years, I never recruited one new distributor from the opportunity ad that was placed on the back cover of every catalogue.

Why not?!......because the punters never saw themselves doing that!.....it didn't duplicate (a cardinal sin!). Furthermore, Kleeneze never seemed to catch on to the idea of using the catalogue's back cover to promote instead, a `fusion sale'. Whats this?!.....signing up a new distributor just in order to enable him/her to obtain retail product at a discount. As Kleeneze's sign up fee was £70 that was no surprise. But suppose they had promoted sign ups for say £20 per month, as a direct debit, allowing them to regularly order product at say 30% discount off the catalogue price?

Kleeneze had been talking about going into Europe back when I was with them. They're behind the curve. Everything listed in their catalogue should be on their website, to be ordered and distributed easily, on-line, worldwide. (a bit like Amways `Quixtar') For another comparison check out the following website: www.moreinfo247.com/8821255/free
Regards
bod

[she-ra] 17/5/2006 14:52

Trading statement was dismal with regards the catalogue business.One cant be optimisitc and what are they doing entering a new market when gearing is high and the trading websites are a problem?

[hamsterape] 17/5/2006 14:10

That's pretty recent then. I was reading the Kleeneze bulletin boards only a few months ago and everyone was talking about people going over to "The Dark Side". Obviously it now seems to have gotten even darker!

That pleases me, though, as I like the Kleeneze business concept. I just think they push the cataloguing itself too much so it becomes a chore and puts off the kind of quality of people that might otherwise get involved and attracts people thyat never see the bigger picture beyond trudging the streets to get their £200 per week order in, before dropping out to get a cleaning job instead after a few weeks and leaving countless uncollected orders on people's doorsteps. Amway does the opposite so you get some very high quality, business/professional types who actually go on to build a network, but then there's no easy way to sell the product other than to friends, family and through work, which us Brits hate doing, so very little product gets sold per agent and few can easily earn money at the early stages.

[bob hardy] 17/5/2006 11:42

Hamster if you have knowledge of the direct selling and catalogues business you would know that the defectors from Kleeneze to Everyday Essentials are now without a business due to the collapse of EE. They should have stuck with a company that has a proven track record as Kleeneze has.

[she-ra] 17/5/2006 10:28

Good point Hamster.

[hamsterape] 17/5/2006 01:08

What if the business model of the door-to-door catalogue side of the business is getting less viable? Year-to-year the number of agents is barely increasing at all despite opening up Holland, yet one promotes the business on the premise of building a growing income by finding several serious people who eventually get the idea of doing the same for themselves, thus multiplying one's time and effort.

I used to do Kleeneze some years ago and I was fairly reliable as an agent, but my customers would still have to wait a minimum of a week to get their goods. Anyone who'd ordered off an unreliable agent and not received goods would take several visits and a lot of convincing before giving me a chance plus there was still the ever-present risk of them ordering from another agent's identical catalogue who then did let them down. I recruited loads of agents and found that most would not get beyond placing even a single order let alone providing an efficient and reliable service.

Couple these factors with the realisation that, as in Direct Sales generally, the goods are charged at often double the price for which they would be available in shops (or now, these days, over the internet). It is this extra "brought direct to your front door" premium over and above the normal price that is paid out in commissions upline, so the remaining uninflted part of the price ought to leave a healthy profit as the residual overhead would mainly then be just warehousing and delivery costs to the agents (probably not cheap, though, as each order would be usually less than £250), yet for some reason the margins don't seem especially great.

Now couple that with the fact that you as an agent would deliver the catalogue saying you'd be back to collect it within a day or two and busy people may not find time to sit down and have a proper look, yet they might think to look up that same gadget later on the internet at their own convenience (now that they've glimpsed it's existence thanks to the catalogue) and then find it cheaper online even after postage.

As well as Kleeneze there is, of course, Betterware, who have designated "areas" but no real motivating incentives for their agents. But now, unlike a few years ago, there is now also another competitor called "Everyday Essentials" who are like a hybrid of the two and who offer exclusive territories AND downline commissions/business-building incentives and I know Kleeneze lose a lot of disillusioned agents to EE but rarely the other way round.

I'm actually a great fan of MLM in principle and especially of the "not having to sell to your friends" aspect of doing it by catalogue, but I know how most people that get involved perceive it, seeing it only in terms of catalogues, and I would say the environment for Kleeneze's main cash-generating business is not necessarily as friendly as it once was, even without the apparent monumental stuff-ups from all the various other non-core ventures affecting overall group profits. How much is the business worth without the catalogue profits, I wonder?

[fusebox] 16/5/2006 07:26

PP misled investors on a dividend on INX and withdrew a lengthy note after the share price slipped badly.

[fusebox] 16/5/2006 07:25

This is what pp says about all the shares he ramps.

The fact is investors have suffered huge losses in paticular on FWY and INX.

[paulypilot] 16/5/2006 06:47

Jolly good. What I would very much like to see now, is substantial Director buying. Not a few thousand shares, but a few million shares. If that happened, then that to me would be the green light to buy in quantity. Trouble is, it's so illiquid that you can't buy in size. I only got 30k today because the markets generally were in freefall. Normally it's virtually impossible to buy more than 10k EHR shares at a time. Cheese.