Aldi Australia And 2016

The figures are not posted yet, but it seems that Aldi Australia has nearly doubled its turnover in 2015, compared to 2014. This is in spite of only increasing its shelf space by about 10% over the year, and the number of regular products from 1200 to 1350.

Effectively, Aldi has increased he average size of its customer basket to about 25 items, matching Coles and Woolworths. And to achieve the rise in turnover estimated, about twice the number of customers pass trough the checkouts as did a year ago. "Our New Year's resolution is to provide you with top quality products at the lowest possible prices!"

Since Aldi's prices have not risen in comparison to the competition, some other factor must be involved. The increase in TV advertising is the first clue. Not that this attracted the increase in customers, but it did attract favourable attention by the media, eager for a share of the advertising revenue.

Aldi had been doing a small amount of TV advertising during 2014, highlighted by its "surfing Santa" Christmas campaign. Its approach to the market had been seen as unique, and it tried a number of strategies that indicated its willingness to spend money. The turning point occurred when Choice published a survey that "proved" an Aldi shopping basket was as little as half the price of the equivalent basket from Coles or Woolworths. This was favourably reported by the media prior to the June holiday weekend, thanks to the advertising possibilities. It seemed to legitimize Aldi in the minds of the consumers, and in the long weekend that followed the report, Aldi customer numbers increased dramatically, kept on increasing, and most new customers made Aldi shopping a regular part of their shopping routine.

Coles had spent the previous four years engaged in a number of strategies to compete with Aldi and now other retailers joined the charge, effectively making Aldi the leader of grocery and variety merchandising.

A downside of the sudden shift in market leadership was that all players became confused, and so did the customers. Aldi recognized this by publicizing its 2016 New Year's resolution to maintain product quality while keeping prices as low as possible.

This year should see if Aldi can manage to achieve this.

"Our New Year's resolution is to provide you with top quality products at the lowest possible prices!"

Ineffective Terrorism; 23/11/15

November 23rd, 2015

Public Service Pricks

Been a long time writing. After my heart attack mid-2011, I decided to be more active, to stop my physical decline and combat the stress of my condition (since I could not obtain mild sedatives legally to reduce my acute anxiety state). A few falls later, I slowed down again, but still managed to fall getting up from the toilet and knock myself unconscious for about 30 minutes and open up my scalp. Losing about a litre of blood before I managed to call for help and crawl to the door to let in the medics.

I spent a few days in hospital, in an isolated room because my MRSA infection had still not been officially cleared up (actually, smart, because I have four topical MRSA outbreaks since my original 2007 escape). So I stopped risking my life further by having unnecessary exercise, and increased my smoking instead (which actually increased my stress because of the huge cost of the tobacco tax). My physical condition declined, and in an effort to have HealthNSW offer me remediation, my doctor asked the RMS to not renew my driver's licence unless my case was reviewed by a specialist.

To date, my licence has been cancelled for two months, and I have spent thousands extra surviving and getting a specialist driving instructor report that I have no medical condition that would affect my driving. Still, my licence has not been returned, so tomorrow I appear in court trying to get it returned before I decide to open my throat outside Parliament House in protest.

Just Bloody Fed Up: October 7, 2014

October 7th, 2014

Neville Angove, The Black Swan

Been playing around, trying to get things done. I know that you can pay Google to list you higher in the search results, and that Wikipedia is as reliable as a $100 watch (that's $100 because a $10 watch is damn reliable until it fails comletely). But I do searches now that yield results that bear little resemblance to results I achieved five years ago. And when I try to correct errors in results, I am not allowed or asked to pay money!

For example, Ancestry.com has the wrong derivation for my surname. It insists it was found first mentioned about the 16th century in Cornwall, and says it is derived from "an" (the) and "gov" (smith). This is wrong. But very convenient.

Nope. That is how today's Cornish describe it. But....

It comes from "Ango,", a place name in NE France. The word means "under dispute" in a local Germanic dialect. I first saw the name in an old atlas on display, in a glass case,  in a maritime shipping company, open to a page displaying France. The area I mentioned had the name "Ango" flowing across it, like a mapmaker's warning, "There be dragons here."

The location was the crossing of the major NS trade link from Germany to Marseilles, and the EW link to Normandy. In the late first millennium, my ancestors traveled both south and west, styling themselves as "of Ango" (D'Ango) or just "Ango.) This can be partly traced by current telephone listings. The group's going west were often styled "Angot" with the "t" silent (a common spelling), hence the later confusion about the spelling.

The extended family settled into Normandy and started a seafaring empire, visiting most of the coasts of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland. The were well enough established and influential in Normandy by 1066 to join with William the Conqueror in invading England (and definitely were involved in the invasion of Ireland in 1067), and by the middle of the 13th century were established in Cornwall as people of influence (and having adopted the name of "Trengove";  one record explained to me by Wendy Angove had one family - six children and two parents - with five different spellings of the name).

I do not know where "Tren" originated. I met a distant relative in Melbourne in 1976, named "Trungove," and he said his forbears had come from Wales. I know that "trun" was found in several central European dialects and vaguely meant "the place,", so I can imagine a forbear and Cornwall, when asked of his name, said he was (say) "Jean Trun Ango" in reply. To a French person, it would mean "Jean from the place of dispute," and easily be written by scribes as "Trenango" and eventually turned into "Ango."

Remember that the pronunciation of "Angove" follows a mix of English, French and German rules. Add general illiteracy and phonetic transcription by scribes, anything is possible. Why people think "gof" is involved is both simple and easy (and knowing how easy names are modified for little reason, definitely easy). "Gof" is often spelled as "Goff," to ensure the vowel is pronounced as short. It is also spelled as "Gough" to stop the vowel from being pronounced as long. If it is pronounced as long (as  in "although") is spelled as "Gof" instead, we are part way there. Remember that "gof" (long vowel) can be spelled as "gov" (using the Germanic pronunciation of "v"), with the "e" added to the end to mimic the French rule for making the preceding vowel long, then we have the accidental evolution of "Trengove" which has a vaguely Cornish ring to it. Illiteracy could have generated "Angove" by the 15th/16th centuries when it appears to have been first written that way (with the name probably pronounced as "Ango" to reflect its origins).

For various reasons the heavy "v" sound became standard. And for a name which has always been so easily misspelled, the "Angove" spelling has always returned (except in Eire and Scotland, where the name is rare in spite of the fact that the census data says that a large number of Angove women  migrated there). If the name was derived from "the smith," why are the names Thesmith, Thebaker, Theplumber, and so on, so rare? The article "the" was always removed. The name "Gove" is fairly common, but it first appeared in the UK in Aberdeen at the time of the French revolution (the reasoning is obvious), and spread south from there. It is not to be found in the west Scottish province of Gowan (pronounced "govvan") from whence it is supposed to have originated.

**********