Versatility and Decency

A conversation with Jeff Rogut

There are few people with any history on the supply side of the industry who would not have had some kind of contact with AACS new Executive Director, Jeff Rogut. That’s because he’s been closely involved in the convenience industry since the late 1980’s, as a franchisee, supplier, retailer and, more recently, in the retail studies arena. But his history in retailing runs much deeper.

After growing up in a working class family in South Africa and attending the local State schools, Mr. Rogut did national service in the infantry. After being promoted into officer training and completing national service he decided to embark on a career in retail.

“I had always worked in local stores as a kid, mostly my uncle’s pharmacy and the local department store. Another uncle set up one of the large retail chains in South Africa - maybe there’s a bit of retailing in my DNA. I also completed a marketing diploma studying part-time as I sought the theoretical side of retail.

“At around the age of 20, I joined one of the major department stores as a trainee buyer. I quickly became involved in the formation of the Dion’s discount chain as Manager of retail appliances and homewares. During my three years there, I met and married Ethne and we had had our first son, Dean..

My wife and I had both travelled and were looking abroad for a place to settle down and raise our family. In April 1977 I responded to an ad which Myer had placed in the South African press. In August of that year, we emigrated to Australia and I became a buyer for Target, located in Geelong, Victoria. Our second son, Paul, was born in Geelong.

“It was almost springtime when we arrived and we took to Australia like a duck to water. Work colleagues had us over for a barbecue on the first weekend. We formed friendships with neighbours which have lasted to this day.

“Australia was a totally new retail environment for me. In South Africa there were huge numbers of people with little or nothing and a fortunate few who were affluent. Australia was mostly middle class and it seemed that people could generally afford the things they wanted. Some people here may have thought of themselves as poor but, compared to life for most people in South Africa, they were well off.

“Delightful though it was, Geelong in those days was, well, a little insular. Soon we discovered Melbourne and fell in love with the place. We moved there after three or four years and I joined Venture stores as Merchandise Manager and, a few years later, McEwan’s Hardware as a buyer.

It wasn’t long before Mr. Rogut found himself becoming restless and wanting to somehow do his “own thing”. An opportunity to run a 7-Eleven franchise presented itself. Even though convenience was still in its infancy in Australia at the time, the Roguts dived in:

“The franchise was affordable and was one of the last 7-Eleven stores to trade under restricted hours. Ethne and I split the shifts because we couldn’t afford a large number of of staff. I opened up in the mornings while she got the kids off to school. The she ran the store in the middle of the day while I did the afternoon shift before closing up at eleven. There really wasn’t much time for anything but the store!

“Supermarkets had restricted hours back then and Slurpees, hot dogs and microwave rolls were all the rage. We engaged with our customers, had only one drive-off in three years and no hold-ups. We both enjoyed the work behind the counter, but Ethne had a special gift for it. She was always the one to win the mystery shopper awards. I was noted in reports as the grumpy old man at eleven o’clock – just before closing.

“We made money but the lifestyle was tough on the family. So we sold the 7-Eleven store and I took a job as Merchandise Manager with Shell, where I stayed for six years. Those were exciting times at Shell, with the beginnings of business format franchising. Five or six hundred independent store owners were being asked to take on a franchise and stick to a bunch of unfamiliar rules which they didn’t always agree with. We had the formation of rejuvenated Shell Shops and the later development of Circle K convenience stores, which were adapted from a Canadian model. Compliance was a challenge and we slowly improved our retail performance, store by store. It was a very dynamic organization and I worked with some fantastic people.

“Then came a number of changes at Shell and even though I was not affected by the changes, I was attracted to an opportunity at 7-Eleven as Buying Manager and eventually became Merchandise and Marketing manager for this iconic brand, still operated in Australia by the very well respected Withers family. I worked alongside Warren Wilmot, who is the current MD.

“This was at the start of the mobile phone explosion and we entered this area of the business at just the right time. Transaction values went up and mobile phone recharge grew to be one of the largest categories in the business. I had some great times during my 6 years at 7-Eleven and had come into regular contact with Peter Dubbelman, who ran Campbells Wholesale.

“I was and still am very impressed with Peter and joined him in Sydney as General Manager for Sales & Marketing for Campbells. I have to be delicate here, because we didn’t enjoy living in Sydney. I sometimes joke that it was because my mother in-law lived there. We had a lovely home in a lovely suburb but, for whatever reason, we just missed Melbourne. Our grown-up boys were there. Our friends were there. And we soon realized that our life was there. Maybe the one major uprooting from South Africa to Australia was enough for us!

“So I returned to Melbourne as Marketing Manager for large format stores in the Mitre 10 hardware chain, which is still an icon brand. I liked the people, enjoyed the work enormously during my four years there and was beginning to see that there were many roles for people like me in retail - those with a generalist background. I found myself wanting to further my own learning and to mentor younger people.

“One of the members of the Australian Centre for Retail Studies at Monash University was a friend of mine and suggested the Executive Director’s job, which had just been advertised. This wasn’t a commercial opportunity, but it was something I really wanted to do. The focus during my three years there was there was on in-house training, research, introducing study tours, retail research and so on. The calibre of people there was amazing, particularly the young people, and it was wonderful watching them grow and develop.

“Then I got a call from Peter Noble, CEO at Foodworks, who I had worked with at Shell. I joined Foodworks as General Manager Marketing & Merchandise managing their marketing, private brand development and space planning among other things. It was great to work in an independent environment, with some store operators who were so good they would put any of the corporates to shame. Some were second or third generation retailers. There were reasonably well documented articles in the press of when FoodWorks acquired twenty-odd stores from Coles and tried to run them as company ops. It didn’t work for the business, but I stayed on largely due to loyalty to the new CEO Rick Wight, who is an incredibly decent man.

“Now that I think about it, the concept of basic human decency is something that had greeted me all the way through my career. I have worked with decent people and companies that treated their people with decency. Decency is something that needs to be preserved in business and I think nowadays that there are many of us who sometimes lose sight of that.”

Comp tennis player, avid reader and devoted gym-junkie, decency runs deep in Jeff Rogut. He is also a Director at Barengarra school in Victoria’s Box Hill. “It’s a very special school which is a circuit breaker for kids with problems who can sometimes fall through the cracks.”

“I am excited about my new role at the Australasian Association of Convenience Stores because I’ve always had a real passion for the industry. The convenience market here is different to anywhere else. We’ve already taken a lot of ideas from the USA, with mixed success. But now maybe it’s time to take ideas from other places as well, particularly the UK and Europe and to develop a few of our own.

“Already we have many hundreds of Foodworks, smaller IGA stores and other stores acting as convenience stores but are not regarded as such. Other channels are competing for the convenience dollar. So why should the customer come to us?

“No one expects a convenience store to be the cheapest, but I think we need to consider our customers, particularly with respect to pricing – there are so many alternatives available to them that we must balance fair pricing and overall value, and having them become repeat customers, rather than just going after the quick sale at insult prices.

“Customers want a friendly, modern, safe and clean environment to shop. People who are now between forty and sixty years of age grew up with convenience stores, but I think we need to develop a stronger appeal to the younger generations. We can’t just sit and do what we’ve always done. I think it is hard sometimes for us to admit that, as an industry, we’ve become a little lazy and opened the door to allow some second rate convenience retailers to open and change customers perception of what an excellent store actually is.

“We need to rediscover ways to engage the customer with better ambience and better service. People actually walk into a convenience store expecting to buy something on impulse. We need to relearn how to tempt and excite them. That’s our challenge. And the only way to meet that challenge is to start innovating and taking a few risks.

“I am not convinced that we need to be bakers or manufacturers in-store in order to succeed. But we do need to become very good at handling and selling fresh product – while it is still fresh. A seven day old sandwich is not fresh. Fresh foods represent an enormous opportunity in convenience, provided that we can get it right. The risks are enormous but so are the rewards.

“Differentiation, standards and compliance are the keys to success.

“Moving across a lot of different areas of retail, it seems to me that people sometimes don’t have a proper grasp of the issues and opportunities in their industry. They don’t always see how ideas from one retail channel can be adapted to work just as well in another.

“Convenience is fertile ground for ideas as well as for people who have retail experience from outside the channel. That’s been the basis of my career.”

ADVICE FOR SUPPLIERS

1. Work closely and collaboratively with your customers; try to understand the industry a bit better and appreciate its future value to your business as you potentially get squeezed out of other channels.
2. Realise that convenience lives on major brands and that this channel is one area where your major brands can make a stand against house brands. The alternative will be a plethora of private brands appearing in convenience stores.
3. Try to make it easier for retailers to order in the right quantity and receive deliveries efficiently; our industry is logistics-limited.

ADVICE FOR RETAILERS

1. Join, support and use your industry association. It exits to support our industry and will provide you with networking, representation, education and research information whenever you may require it.
2. Innovate. Don’t be afraid of failure. Your business model needs to change and evolve.
3. Understand that the consumer is changing and you need to meet and be a part of that change.