Tag Archives: voluntary administration

Darrell Lea Chocolates/Newsagent – Roselands, NSW

No doubt you’ve heard about the financial struggles faced by Darrell Lea over the past few months, and if you haven’t, you might want to rethink buying Mum and Dad a Rocklea Road for Christmas. It’s a sad thing when suddenly chocolate isn’t financially viable enough. What, did everyone just decide it was terrible after 85 years? Enough terrible puns were made by the papers at the time of Darrell Lea’s collapse, so I’ll spare us all that nightmare as today we look at the Roselands outlet of the chocolate maker.

Roselands Shopping Centre is up for an entry itself in the future, so watch this space (at the rate I’ve been going lately, it should only take another six years), but the part of Roselands Darrell Lea ended up in is one of its older areas. Located almost at the bottom of a downward escalator, you’d think maximum exposure + delicious chocolate would = maximum delicious profits. Well…

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Plans for the empty shop involve an expansion by the neighbouring newsagent, which is so cramped and old it wouldn’t surprise me if they’d built the entire shopping centre around it. Hopefully, the doubling of their floorspace will allow much more room for their diligent army of plain-clothed guards to continue their campaign of death-staring at anyone they think might be shoplifting.

According to this article on the store’s closure, Darrell Lea admin chose to close Roselands (looks like I’ve met my assonance quota for the day), yet kept the Bankstown Centro store open. But commenter Brad Edwards reveals the truth:

Screen shot 2012-12-17 at 11.10.19 AMMore like…Darrell LIE! Oh, sorry.

Cue/Krispy Kreme/Ugg Boot Warehouse – Wynyard, NSW

Remember Krispy Kreme? That donut (or doughnut) fad that took off in 2003 and crashed hard in…late 2003? For a good part of that year, everyone was talking about Krispy Kremes. Workplaces stocked them as treats, families bought them by the boxful. I knew a guy who would spend an hour in the car driving out to the Krispy Kreme at Liverpool to buy six boxes at a time because he loved them that much, and there was a time when that was the most convenient location. Krispy Kreme responded to the demand by increasing the number of stores, failing to realise that fads are fads because they don’t last. Exhibit A: Krispy Kreme.

Now a shadow of its former self, KK’s Australian subsidiary went into voluntary administration in late 2010, citing poor sales as the reason. Imagine how poor the sales must have been for it to only give up the game in 2010, a full seven years after the honeymoon was over. Even more mindblowing is the fact that the brand has been around since 1937. In any case, this site is an example of a location that no longer wanted doughnuts (or donuts) and voted with its feet…literally: Ugg boots are the wares being peddled here now.

Before KK kame along to korrupt konsumers with krappy konfectionery, Cue clothing ran the shop. Cue has been around since 1968, and since forging a relationship with Myer in 1970 hadn’t had as much need for self-contained shops. This one opened in 1976, but closed during the 1990s due to declining sales. That’s a better run that Krispy Kreme had. Cue’s executive director Justin Levis said in 2008 that the shop closed because the surrounding shops had become tacky bargain stores. Now that the ugg boot shop has moved in, this location has finally found its place in that dynasty.