Wesfarmers, the parent company of Kmart, Target, Bunnings, and Officeworks, has made the tough call to shut down their online store Catch for good as part of a cost-cutting move.
Catch, originally founded in 2006 as Catch of the Day, was one of Australia’s first online retail success stories.
Wesfarmers acquired the platform in 2019 for a cool $230 million and shortly after, analysts from JP Morgan valued it at over $1 billion.
But despite its promising start, Catch has struggled under Wesfarmers’ ownership, racking up losses of more than $350 million over the past three and a half years.
With competition from online giants like Amazon, Kogan, and Temu, Australian shoppers have shifted their loyalty, leaving Catch unable to keep pace.
The platform will officially stop selling products on April 30.
As for Catch’s fulfillment warehouses in Sydney and Melbourne, which are currently running at half-capacity, they’ll soon be repurposed by Kmart.
