The following is a list of organisations with which I have been intimately involved either as owner or part-owner
Club Nova is an experiment for a direction towards pushing importers of consumer (foodstuff) goods.
Many importers have restricted themselves by using middle-men with a limited interest in the local importer's success. Club Nova literally scours the world for the best deals (price and quality) it can source for it's members/customers.
The Tonga Pa'anga is a very weak currency and it is very important for Club Nova to leverage what low prices we can source overseas. Regular trips are made during the year to review existing supply markets (including goods suppliers, transportation and other facilitators.)
All suppliers are warned that Club Nova is always shopping for better deals, and better is never price but must combine a price from which together we can profit as well as a high quality service/product. Club Nova is extremely concerned that our suppliers are advantaged with the partnership and a long-term mutually beneficial arrangement can be retained.
The Supply search program is actively pursued by Club Nova and it is a high cost item which we believe will generate significant benefits to our customers. Regular trips are made to Australasia, Asia, Europe with special trips arranged for the America's
Many stores in Tonga focus on big profit items, or at least the trappings of large sums of money in the hand from single items. Club Nova is puposely directed at high volume, profitable margin products. Our focus is to increase turnover to provide the same luxuries as high profit items.
Items which consumers request, but are slow turnovers are dropped from our selection list. This allows Club Nova to generate strong cash-flow which is giving us more authority with suppliers and in turn allowing us to maintain a low price profile for consumers.
Club Nova has two major goals with low prices, drive product turn-over and to seriously impact the local economy.
We at Club Nova believe that Tonga's limited funds economy requires high quality, low cost products in the basic necessities (food, clothing, security) if the people are to have disposable income to help expand the economy. Existing importers focussed on high profit mark-ups and were a disservice to the long-term viability of the local economy. Club Nova introduced a membership program to combat restricted and arbitrary access to low prices by the existing retail/wholesale pricing structures
Through the Club Membership program, all consumers already provided with low prices can now obtain evern lower prices. Club Membership is a significant contributor to small retail outlets (our major group of customers) as well as large families and especially financially constrained families.
An unfortunate side-effect of our pricing strategy seems to be seeing competitors flee their high price items to products we do not supply. Products not included in our range seems to be used by competitors (by increasing prices) to compensate their sales loss. Nonetheless, these same competitors are now forced to offer customers lower prices on a significant range of products as Club Nova carries over 30 categories of foodstuff and domestic use consumables.
December 1997 Club Nova officially opened to the public from the premises of the Nova Store Discount outlet in Fanga-'o-Pilolevu, Taufa'ahau Road beside the Free Wesleyan Church. There were no formal opening programs, a word of prayer was requested of Rev. Dr. Sione 'Amanaki Havea at his residence and the workers began.
Although the Club has consistently approached the landlord for a new leasing arrangement it is unclear whether at the expiration of the lease whether Club Nova can continue at these premises. December 1998 Club Nova is in talks with neigbours about a long-term lease which the Club hopes to begin construction before December 1999.
The Club Nova Delivery Service program was initially designated to a third party, as a support initiative to their existing delivery service. When that arrangement fell apart Club Nova began its own delivery service initially through a rented vehicle and by August 1998 Club Nova had two delivery vehicles directly supplyign small retailers on Tongatapu.
The 'Ofeina Store retail outlet came out of concerns by friends for a better business opportunity and some initial feedback that 'Eua was a prime position for a new retailer. Although the major ideas for introduction in the new store have not yet been realised, the store has within months of its opening become a necessary feature of the 'Eua supply service.
A limited number of goals were set for the 'Eua outlet and
'Ofeina Store supplies a much broader range of goods than Club Nova. Most goods are sourced through Club Nova which offsets costs, and also increases vertical integration in the organisations.
[ref: http://www.tongatapu.net.to]
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