Vodafone Hutchison buys back retail outlets

Vodafone Hutchison Australia will reportedly pay $80 million to buy back 208 retail outlets that are currently operating under the Vodafone brand in an outsourced retail model.

The stores have previously operated under management companies Digicall, First Mobile, InsideMobile and GSM for the past six years, but VHA is purchasing them back to streamline operations.

VHA, which combined Vodafone and Hutchison’s operations into a single entity, will not take back stores under the ‘3′ brand, as they are already managed by the company.

“We are doing this so VHA can provide a more cohesive, consistent Vodafone customer experience and we think we can achieve this by bringing the management of these stores and the employees in-house,” a VHA spokesman told The Australian.

Digicall and First Mobile operate 79 stores, with Inside Mobile and GSM operating 28 and 22 stores, respectively. Digicall alone records $160 million in revenue and accounts for over one quarter of Vodafone subscriptions.

VHA said employees will remain on their current contracts, while keeping any benefits such as commission rates and accrued annual leave.

The process will increase VHA’s employee count from 3700 to 5100. The company has previously said that it will cut any duplicate roles that occur during organisational restructuring. However, it is unlikely that retail and call-centre staff will be affected.

The staff increase comes as VHA announced last week that head office staff will be asked to re-apply for their current positions.

“The majority of duplication is in the head office functions so the majority of the redundancies will be there. We’re working through numbers at the moment,” VHA chief executive Nigel Dews said earlier this year.