Miners Den Group In Australia Have Lost Their Minelab Dealership

[Aureous]

Minelab's new marketing strategy.....

[TheDeepseeker]

I can almost hear Sammy Davis Junior singing now-

 

Who can sneak a price rise,

But make you want it too?

Sell it in a bundle with a useless coil or two,

The Candy Man…

The Candy Man….

The Candy man can ‘cos he mixes it with tech and makes it work so good…

 

Who can send a signal,

To light up whats beneath?

Find you more gold than Travis Scott’s got in his teeth,

The Candy Man…

The Candy Man…..

The Candy Man can ‘cos he mixes it with tech and makes it work so good.

 

Chorus

The Candy Man takes,

The millions he makes.

Some might say Avaricious,

exceeding all the dealers wishes,

-Just don’t you sell a Garret or a Fishers’……

 

Sorry guys, it’s Friday night here in Oz and I’ve had a couple beers. 😃

Yes it's a sad state of affairs alright, especially for the dealers who have put their heart and soul into selling their gear for all these years. Let's just hope some good eventually comes out of it and promotes more diversity and healthy competition.

[dirtman]

26 minutes ago, TheDeepseeker said:

I can almost hear Sammy Davis Junior singing now-

 

Who can sneak a price rise,

But make you want it too?

Sell it in a bundle with a useless coil or two,

The Candy Man…

The Candy Man….

The Candy man can ‘cos he mixes it with tech and makes it work so good…

 

Who can send a signal,

To light up whats beneath?

Find you more gold than Travis Scott’s got in his teeth,

The Candy Man…

The Candy Man…..

The Candy Man can ‘cos he mixes it with tech and makes it work so good.

 

Chorus

The Candy Man takes,

The millions he makes.

Some might say Avaricious,

exceeding all the dealers wishes,

-Just don’t you sell a Garret or a Fishers’……

 

Sorry guys, it’s Friday night here in Oz and I’ve had a couple beers. 😃

Yes it's a sad state of affairs alright, especially for the dealers who have put their heart and soul into selling their gear for all these years. Let's just hope some good eventually comes out of it and promotes more diversity and healthy competition.

Genius Lyrics 👍👍👍🤣😂😂😂

[Jerry The Mining Monkey]

This reminds me of the events leading up to Whites Electronics closure. It started with the dealers getting axed then news of some layoffs in sweet home, then parts blowouts, then the letter to all customers indicating of the companies fiscal position and then the hammer.

 

Hopefully, it's not that and just a shift in marketing ,but definitely lines up with today's insane world of inflation and aggressive behavior,what's happening out there man?

[GotAU?]

14 hours ago, phrunt said:

That's the big change they're talking about I guess, they should take on Garrett too, especially now with the reduced Axiom pricing, and hopefully it can come down further yet in OZ like it has in the US, it's virtually Algoforce pricing there by the time you add a coil and battery to the Algoforce and that's a damn cheap PI.  I truly hope Nokta end up making an awesome PI too.

I don't know how much this stuff will come back to bite Minelab, all these dealers that were their marketing team basically moving onto selling and promoting other brands.

It appeared to me Miners Den were the biggest dealer in OZ, and with smaller ones also now being dumped they're losing a lot of exposure and retail opportunity.

You are right, Simon, I also switched over to an Axiom as my main PI due to finances and the recent lower price drop made it possible. But I know Minelab’s new pricing will really make it near impossible for most people to justify getting them, and having no personal experience or training from a dealer will deter people from buying the more expensive ones.

[Geotech]

2 hours ago, Jerry Perez said:

This reminds me of the events leading up to Whites Electronics closure. It started with the dealers getting axed then news of some layoffs in sweet home, then parts blowouts, then the letter to all customers indicating of the companies fiscal position and then the hammer.

White's demise was a little bit the opposite... Garrett and First Texas were quick to embrace online sales and White's refused, insisting they would only sell through dealers. Problem was, many of those dealers sold out of their homes & garages, and that was very uncomfortable for shoppers who could, instead, make 3 clicks on Amazon and have a Garrett delivered to their front door. When I worked at White's I would plead for them to change their sales model but the entire distribution network were vocally opposed. By the time White's started making the change to online sales, it was too late.

[Steve Herschbach]

On 2/14/2025 at 10:46 AM, Geotech said:

White's demise was a little bit the opposite... Garrett and First Texas were quick to embrace online sales and White's refused, insisting they would only sell through dealers. Problem was, many of those dealers sold out of their homes & garages, and that was very uncomfortable for shoppers who could, instead, make 3 clicks on Amazon and have a Garrett delivered to their front door. When I worked at White's I would plead for them to change their sales model but the entire distribution network were vocally opposed. By the time White's started making the change to online sales, it was too late.

Exactly. White’s feared and tried to control online sales. Only a few favored distributors who wanted the whole pie could do it at all. As a dealer I was not allowed to sell or even display White’s detectors on my website - one of the absolute stupidest things I ever saw in all my years of business. So I did what any sensible business man does, got all the other brands and sold them online instead. White’s just gave me a little badge I could put on my website that directed to a single page they hosted. They in effect became invisible on the internet as a result, all dealers appearing to favor all other brands. Newbies either did not know they existed, or probably thought they were no good since dealers pushed the other brands instead. It may ultimately be the biggest underlying reason for their downfall as it was, as Carl notes, way too late when they finally made the change.

The Minelab deal is simple. People say they want dealers and will complain. But when the GPZ 8000 comes out and only can be had from Minelab direct, will those of you who want it refuse to buy in protest? No? I thought not. Minelab can do as they please and as long as people line up to buy regardless, why share a dollar with middlemen? Competition is increasing and they must maintain margins to please shareholders, and this is a very easy way to do it.

I do not want to imply it is just Minelab. Garrett is aggressively pushing their online store with constant sales and direct to customer emails, no different than Minelab. First Texas is heavily discounting through their direct Amazon and eBay stores. It's simply 21st century marketing and here to stay, like it or not. There may continue to be room for hand-holding full service dealers but the reality is most people want bottom dollar price delivered to doorstep. These moves cater to that.

[phrunt]

yep, and they'll maintain the big box retailers in Australia like Anaconda as they are a different strategy than dealers, for a start they're in every city and major town and secondly but most importantly they rely on high volume of sales with low markup, Minelab won't mind paying them the 5% or whatever small percentage markup they run off.   Not many dealers would survive off big box store markups.

Miners Den was always more expensive than Anaconda but as customers said they offered better advice to the buyer as they knew about the product whereas Anaconda just had sales people with little idea about what they were selling.   I'd not be surprised if lots of people went to Miners Den, got all the advice they required then went to Anaconda to buy for the best price, saw this sort of thing all the time in retail.

Anaconda doesn't sell the high-priced models like the 6000 and 7000 though, they're best kept direct sales as they don't suit a retail environment like that, just too expensive to go into those stores.

It probably didn't make the big shareholders too happy to see shops thrive off only selling Minelab products, the wealth those stores are generating is coming directly out of Minelab's pocket, going direct eliminates that.  It looks as if no dealer is safe though, and the chops are likely to keep happening, if they get rid of their biggest dealer in Australia that was exclusively Minelab for detectors then anyone is suitable for the chopping block big or small.

200+ Episodes of the Minelab show promoting their products didn't save them.

[Jonathan Porter]

Gosh golly what a gossipy place DP is today. I have a dealership and currently I feel pretty safe from being closed down. I have no inside info on the machinations of ML marketing but all my dealings with them on that level have been proactive and supportive of our business, and going by the CC emails to all the other dealerships nation wide, focusing on how to support and improve our ways of doing business and growing the market is a very big part of that from ML’s perspective.

Couple of facts about Miners Den, they closed (sold) their Brisbane QLD store YEARS ago, the Sydney Store was also closed a long time back and going by recent Social Media content the Adelaide store has been ear marked to close for some time too, clearly a profitability in the way they do business making those locations unviable. Nothing sinister there and I seriously doubt is even remotely related to the latest news other than being perhaps a glimpse at the bigger picture.

Online sales is a thing but it’s not ideal when selling a product that requires hands on training (I’m not singling out any Australian dealership here just generalising the industry we work in), my business is ideally situated for the training aspect but it’s more complex for the bigger city dealerships who have the population base but no ready access to goldfields where travel is required for gold prospecting, so bundle discount packages are offered up to sweeten sales with the “offer” of training at a set location on a date to be announced and inevitably the customer doesn’t turn up or can’t due to travel or time constraints, it’s the perfect storm because the dealer has satisfied the offer of training but basically bribed the customer with free stuff to not complain and go find out how from someone like us.

Online sales have no real connection between the dealer and the customer, so no rapport is made. Guess who these people come to see when they get to the goldfields? Or they try to learn in a caravan park with all the add-water-and-stir instant experts who learned off YouTube.

City dealers have much higher overheads and have to move stock more often so the discounting and free offers gets out of hand as they try to maintain market share with the other big players, it’s a cascade effect that costs every dealer in the country as we all then have to match the offers to remain viable. It’s good for customers though as they are getting good value, but are they?

If I have to give away costly free stuff this comes out of my margins, which is mostly tied up in MY time as I one-on-one train my customers on the day of purchase or very close to that time. Our training is customer dependant, so some people require a lot more time spent with them over a given time frame because it is a highly individual learning process, some come back again many times, even years later. I don’t spend huge amounts of time with the customer in the field but focus on getting the “Look it can be done, “see? I just did it” aspect,  in combination with the verbal training and assembly in store I can usually achieve all this in a few hours in the field so they can then fly solo with the further offer of support and more catch ups if required. Because of my experience I am confident I can show even the most experienced users a thing or two, this can save a lot of negative moments on bad habits etc. 

So I don’t play the discount game, I can’t if I want to remain a premier field training business with a very high customer success rate. My aim is for every gold detector I sell to come with a happy customer who not only keeps the detector they bought from us, but also has success with it and spreads the word on how to go about it to every other person they meet which then grows the brand and my market share, which I consider cheap advertising. I’d rather sell half the amount of machines at full margin and do the right thing by my customers than sell triple the amount and not have the resources to provide our customers with the support they need. That’s our business model and it works for us , this is where our business is situated, we are not a BOX shifting outfit.

I’m not conjecturing on the whys and wherefores of Minelab’s decisions to cancel dealerships, I’ve no clear idea of the rational behind any of it, I just know that customers who spend BIG money on these detectors need the support which I try to provide from the margin provided. Seeing a piece of gold being found is highly motivating and empowering, you can’t do that from a corporate office on something as complicated as a GPX or GPZ, sure they can make them simpler to operate but they can’t teach the techniques required to be successful in goldfields with them online.

Minelab are very aware of the need for field training, it is front and centre on the gold products and is supported by their marketing team who push this concept endlessly (so,e of those people I personally trained). Support equals success, success equals growth. The product has the performance built in, the price requires the support so the customer can tap into the bit Minelab can’t include with the detector.

JP