Featured, Opinion - Wednesday, March 9, 2011 14:43 - 38 Comments

How seriously should we take Ruslan Kogan?

opinion You would have had to have had your head buried under a rock over the past several weeks if you worked in Australia’s technology sector and missed the flurry of stories about maverick consumer electronics entrepreneur Ruslan Kogan.

Already engaged in a very public slanging match with Harvey Norman founder Gerry Harvey, Kogan opened up another front in his war against Australian bricks and mortar technology retailers, calling out JB Hi-Fi for being “Apple’s bitch” for what he saw as a dangerous dependence on the products of the notoriously single-minded Cupertino giant.

JB Hi-Fi chief Terry Smart didn’t waste any time firing back … soberly telling SmartCompany that Kogan’s claims about JB Hi-Fi’s Apple dependence were simply incorrect — based on bad data. Others weren’t quite so diplomatic, with Smarthouse quoting an anonymous JB Hi-Fi manager as describing Kogan as a “dickhead” and alleging that there was “every possibility” that Kogan and his primary method of distribution — his highly optimised website — would not be active come 2014.

And of course, there was the inevitable Kogan rejoinder, with the entrepreneur publicly wagering $1 million that there would be no Apple products in JB Hi-Fi’s stores on March 14, 2014 — and even going to the trouble of drawing up a contract (PDF) to put his money where his mouth is.

Now there’s a lot to like about Kogan’s ongoing battle with Australia’s big retailers. Companies like Harvey Norman have earned a reputation over the past decade for their “hardly normal” prices, and many of us like to see a young upstart entrepreneur take on some of the nation’s doddering warhorses on their own turf.

Kogan’s entire approach has a very David and Goliath feel about it, and technology is on his side, with many Australians these days indeed preferring to buy products online rather than suffer a consumer electronics retail experience which mostly seems designed to part us with our hard-earned cash as quickly as possible, rather than to actually meet our shopping needs.

But I think it’s also important to remember just what Kogan’s role is in the scheme of things.

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