Earnings from Harvey Norman's Austrlian network fell 7 per cent last financial year,and comparable sales fell 1.1 per cent in July and August. The company's share price has,meanwhile,been trading around three-year lows.
"I don't think you can build a brand and let it stand still,"Harvey tells Fairfax Media during a tour of the Auburn store.
"I don't want them to look at it and say ‘oh,I’ve been to Harvey Norman they haven’t changed for years.’
“I think they say that about a very big percentage of retailers across the country,and in some cases they could say it about us. If you want to stop them saying that you have to give them a reason.”
Page says the now-global flagship strategy was developed by working with its major suppliers - from tech giants like Apple to high-end stove and oven brands - to discover how they wanted shoppers to experience their products.
Singapore was chosen as the first flagship store.
The sales uptick at the first flagship store at Singapore's Millenia Walk shopping centre beat its business case by 50 per cent,prompting the company to roll out the concept across its global network.
“It went amazingly well in a market that is strong on digital,online,physical,which is everything that we are,"says Page.
The rise of online retailers likeAmazon is one reason for market scepticism about Harvey Norman,but Page says Singapore was a success despite there being more online competitors there.
"We’re up against Alibaba’s Lazada,you’ve got Amazon Prime,you’ve got JD.com,you’ve got Shopee,all of those strong in place in Singapore and we’re thriving,"she says.
"It’s quite obvious that the customer,when it comes to our sort of product,wants to shop in store."
The company expects a 20 to 30 per cent jump in annual sales at the Auburn store,where it has handed over large chunks of real estate to categories it thinks can grow,such as flooring,outdoor cooking,and computer games - a mainstay of its competitor JB Hi-Fi.
It will also be somewhere it can try out new products or categories,which if successful,can then be rolled out to its other 195 Australian stores.
The flagship strategy has fortified their long held,sometimes at the point of ridicule,view that online shopping will not come to dominate retail in the way some suggest,or that the likes of Amazon and other online retailers present a significant threat to its business.
Harvey Norman has built its online offering,which accounts for about 3 per cent of total sales. But Harvey says that sales channel shouldn't be given undue focus when most of its customers continued to come into stores.
Retailers who were trumpeting their online sales growth were peddling “fake news”,he says.
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“It’s big growth on nothing,but unless you have that narrative,you look like a dinosaur. And if someone like me comes out and says this is bullshit,[then] I’m a dinosaur,"he says.
"I’m not a dinosaur. But the average CEO of a retail shop is not going to come out and say what I say,because if he doesn't his board is going to jump on him,because the'narrative'is out there. But it’s bullshit - the reality is something else completely different.”
Running an online business is actually more expensive than bricks and mortar,says Harvey,and the likes of Amazon would eventually open physical shops once it became serious about making profits - which is exactly what Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba is doing.
Page says retailers around the world had invested heavily in their online capabilities while letting their stores deteriorate,exacerbating any organic shift from in-store to online shopping.
"There’s been mass exodus particularly by female shoppers because the retailers have not been respectful of how they want to shop,"she says. “If you trash a place why do you expect the sales to still come”?
Harvey says the flagship strategy will give it an edge against what it sees as its main competitors -JB Hi-Fi,which in 2016 also bought the home appliances chain The Good Guys.
Page says Australia was the last country where Harvey Norman opened a flagship store because it wanted to learn from the other locations and ensure it had the model right when it tried it here.
With products and technology trends moving fast,the company will now return to its Singapore flagship and redesign that store with ideas that will eventually trickle back to Australia.
“Singapore has become our incubator,"she says.
"It’s the area that most of the big brands are happy to come to and play. It’s hard to get them on a plane all the way to Australia.
"We’re just really fortunate that we were actually able to do that in south-east Asia and be testing it in a pretty tough market - I can’t think of doing it any other way now."
If the Sydney store is the success they predict,Harvey says they will look to open flagships in Melbourne,Brisbane and Perth too.