TRADE TALK
CUSTOMER FOCUS KEY TO RETAIL SUCCESS
Having joined BAPCOR Retail as Executive General Manager - Retail only 18 months ago, Tim Cockayne is new to the Automotive Industry. However, his extensive retail experience is already paying dividends for the suite of brands under his watch Melbourne born and bred, Tim grew up in Keysborough near Noble Park, sharing the house with four siblings, which undoubtedly helped him develop his highly competitive nature. “When you’re sharing a three-bedroom house with four other kids, all vying for attention, you learn to be competitive pretty quickly,” Tim said. “That competitive nature has stayed with me for my entire life and has had a big impact on my career path.” Tim’s role as Executive General Manager of Retail at BAPCOR Retail encompasses an interesting mix of retail and service businesses, including Autobarn, Autopro, Sprint, Midas, and ABS. But before we jump head-first into his current job, it would be remiss to gloss over what is certainly an exciting and varied career and one that is different from many in the automotive aftermarket. “As soon as I turned 18, I left school and just thought that I wanted to be a chef for some reason. Looking back, I don’t even know why as I don’t even enjoy food that much,” Tim explained. “But my skills in the kitchen helped me travel all around Australia. I packed up my knives, jumped in the car and lived in weird and wonderful places like Norseman, which is right at the end of the Nullarbor, a town of 2000 people – I lived there and played a whole footy season there and learnt a lot about life.” Tim’s time in the kitchen did not last long, and at the tender age of 21, he found his true passion, retail. After pounding the pavement as a door-to-
door salesperson, Tim landed on his feet when he joined a large jewellery company. “I scored a role as an Assistant Category Manager and built my way up through the business,” Tim described. “It was here that I learnt the value of merchandising, but when I moved into a marketing role, I just fell in love with it, and I’ve never left retail since. I just love retail. It’s the thing that drives me nonstop every single day.” Tim went from a kid who was learning how to cook to travelling to Hong Kong when he was just 22 years old, purchasing and buying products for the jewellery company – certainly, a massive change from living in a small town in outback Australia. Having launched his career in retailing, Tim was ready for a new challenge. “I never wanted to be compartmentalised. I never wanted to be known as just a category manager, just a buyer, a jewellery retailer, or a specialty shop store retailer,” Tim explained. By the time Tim decided it was time to move out of jewellery retailing, he had ticked many boxes from merchandising to marketing and operations to IT. “I’d pretty much covered every spectrum of the jewellery business, so I went hunting for a new challenge,” said Tim. That hunt for new experiences, combined with his healthy appetite for competition, saw Tim take on a position as Chief Executive Officer of
Tim Cockayne a large consumer electronics business before moving into the tool industry, where he enjoyed six and a half years as the Chief Executive Officer of Total Tools. “When I joined Total Tools, it was just a small business losing money, so I knew I had a big job ahead,” Tim explained. “But during my time there, we grew it into a business turning over 500 million and positing it as the premier destination for trade professionals.” Following his successful tenure at Total Tools, Tim jumped into his first role in the automotive aftermarket, signing on at BAPCOR Retail. “I know that many people who work in the automotive aftermarket started their career in the industry and have worked in it their whole life,” Tim commented. “But that didn’t concern me at all. In my mind, the product really is secondary.” Tim believes that success in any retail environment is actually about a customer rather than a product. “It’s about understanding the customer, the customer journey, and identifying the different types of customers you need to attract to make any retail business a success,” Tim explained. “It’s critical to understand where you want to target, who you want to focus on, and how you connect with them. That’s the key to building a robust and profitable retail business.” Of course, managing five retail entities for the group has its challenges. “To start with, you have different customer bases on which to focus. There are some complexities, but it’s probably less difficult than people think,” said Tim.
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Australian Automotive Aftermarket Magazine February 2021
