Gerry Harvey Quotes
120 Gerry Harvey Quotes
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[On being asked in the early 1990s about the future trend of computer sales] I don’t know. Nobody knows where this is all going.
Gerry Harvey
[On their Slovenian store] It has a bigger risk element than operation a shop down the road in Melbourne or Sydney… it’s the riskiest thing we’ve ever done, but two months from now we should be able to say whether we’re looking good.
Gerry Harvey
Slovenia is among the richest countries in Eastern Europe and there are no mainstream rivals like Dixons or anyone else there yet. It’s a gamble, but it’s a pretty good gamble on closer inspection.
Gerry Harvey
[On just opening a new Harvey Norman store in Jindalee, Queensland] The two guys who have the shop are both about 37 or 38 and it’s their first big opportunity to make something happen for them. They’re so excited, so keen and so keyed up; it just rubs off on the customers. I get a terrific kick out of that – having a franchisee make a big success.
Gerry Harvey
Placing trust in individuals, trying to encourage them, that’s what Harvey Norman is all about. I thought if we empowered people, if we franchised them, let them make decisions and own the business, then we would get a much better result. So that’s what I endeavoured to do when I opened Harvey Norman in 1982. Harvey Norman is now the most successful retailer in Australian history.
Gerry Harvey
If you make $30,000 a year you will probably just do the job, if you make $60,000 you will want to do it a little bit more, if you make $100,000 you will want to do it a lot more and so on.
Gerry Harvey
All my great ones, the stars that I’ve got over the years, all started young, all know the business backwards and all showed great potential at a young age. So if I get a bloke that walks in here and he’s 35, and he wants to tell me about how he’s going to make it and all this, I look at him and say, ‘There are very few success stories in blokes your age.’
Gerry Harvey
That’s where small business has it all over the big corporations – customers can relate to the owner.
Gerry Harvey
In the chain store, people don’t care enough. It’s too hard to get the customers and their stock. If somebody steals something out of our shop our blokes will chase them down the road for five miles to catch them….
Gerry Harvey
In a chain, crook staff stay on. The manager thinks they’re in the union so it’s too much trouble to get rid of them…
Gerry Harvey
If you’re a franchisee you’re competing with other franchisees.
Gerry Harvey
I get people coming in and asking whether I’ve thought of putting our properties in a trust, and immediately I’m thinking, ‘How much does this bloke think he’s going to make out of me?’ This is because that’s what gave him the idea in the first place, to free up my money so he could make some money. The problem with putting the properties in a trust is that it will cost you 5 per cent for stamp duty. Then you’ve got to set up the company, then you’ve got to pay people to manage ti and then you have to get a valuation done every year or two and they charge you a fortune. So what’s the point of that? It’s just middlemen getting money for nothing.
Gerry Harvey
[On the internet] Little is being sold profitably on the Internet. That’s the joke of it. Who’s buying? Yes we get all these hits. We get a thousand hits a day or more for two sales. A thousand of the bastards look and only two buy!
Gerry Harvey
[In March 2000 when the NASDAQ hit its all time high] There’s one dark cloud… the crash of the dot.com economy. It could be a horrendous crash. And that will knock everything else out the door. I don’t think any business would be immune. I speak to some stockholders about it and they say to me ‘You’d be surprised how many ordinary people are in some of these stocks. Well those people are going to get hurt very badly.’ When your ordinary middle class person gets hurt, that’s when the economy suffers.
Gerry Harvey
When your ordinary middle class person gets hurt, that’s when the economy suffers.
Gerry Harvey
[In 2003 looking back on the dot com boom] It was a strange time. People were afraid to criticise. A lot of business leaders I know would not say a word, because they did not want to look like they were out of date. Then I went out and said it was all a giant con, and I looked like a dinosaur.
Gerry Harvey
Most manufacturers would see the new Buy.com advertisements and vomit.
Gerry Harvey
[On John Singleton] He’s always been a difficult bloke to fight because the difficult blokes to beat are the blokes who have got no fear… I can’t believe he hasn’t died; it’s a miracle.
Gerry Harvey
I didn’t build up these properties to sell them. I very rarely sell anything.
Gerry Harvey
You are either a retailer or a supplier, you are not both. And I don’t feel very happy about supporting anyone that is.
Gerry Harvey
I’ve got racehorses and that keeps me poor; that’s a very expensive habit. That’s much more expensive than anything you can think of.
Gerry Harvey
People in the street are always yelling out ‘G’day Harvey!’ or ‘Hi, Mr Norman!’ – I guess it’s understandable.
Gerry Harvey
I’ve got an ordinary house. I mean I could go and buy the best waterfront property, ten houses in Vauclause, and it wouldn’t matter, it’s all bullsh*t.
Gerry Harvey
I’m pretty unique I think.
Gerry Harvey
I do like doing things a little different; a little loud; yes, sometimes even a little brash.
Gerry Harvey
I write all the radio commercials in about 30 seconds. I keep it simple to keep the message across.
Gerry Harvey
Most people will not try anything new: their minds are not open to new ideas. But a retailer must be constantly looking for new ideas and trends.
Gerry Harvey
I tell you the people who bargain the best: they’re the Indians, Chinese, Greeks, Italians, Yugoslavs, and all those ethnics who come from countries where if you want to sell something for $50 they put $100 on it.
Gerry Harvey
I used to watch other furniture and electrical appliance retailers go broke, because they refused to change, and I’d think, please God don’t let that happen to me – a retailer has to be willing to change all the time.
Gerry Harvey
[To John Singleton] How much are these ads going to cost me?
Gerry Harvey
[On teaching John Singleton that there were other ways to lose money on horses than by simply betting on them] I invited him to go out to the horse sales with me in 1973. I remember asking ‘Do you want to buy one with me?’ and he said, ‘No, no, no.’ Then he went off to get a pie or something and when he came back he said, ‘Have we bought anything yet? I told him ‘Yeah, I just bought you one.’ And that was our first, Fleet Royal.
Gerry Harvey
I’m over it. You can rub it in all you want.
Gerry Harvey
[On John Singleton bidding $120,000 and then maybe bidding against himself at $200,000 for a horse at auction] Over the years some of the things I’ve see him do are quite erratic, but in many cases they haven’t ended up erratic.
Gerry Harvey
[On giving John Singleton $100,000 when he was hard on his luck] No letter, no guarantee, no asking for anything, just as a mate.
Gerry Harvey
I opened Arncliffe in ’61. I had Neutral Bay, and Stanmore. I think they were the only three shops I had maybe. No, I would have had more than that. I might have had Canberra going and Wollongong, maybe, something like that. And in pops John Singleton. He went into the Stanmore shop first and the bloke that was running it sent him over to me at Arncliffe, so that’s how I met him.
Gerry Harvey
We used to use just local papers, letter-box drops, nothing else. But then this fellow with a little advertising agency comes in and tries to talk me into using TV. I didn’t want to deal with him because I thought ‘I’ve got a good business, I do my own newspaper ads and everything, I don’t need this bloke,’ but I sat there and listened to him.
Gerry Harvey
[On not reading John Singleton’s glossy brochure and using it to stub out his cigarette] I don’t give a f*ck about your brochure, I’m looking at you. I do business with the bloke.
Gerry Harvey
It’s one of those things – you sit down and you talk for an hour or so and you decide if you like the bloke or if you don’t. Somehow or other I said, ‘Okay, I’ll go with you’ and we started advertising on television.
Gerry Harvey
Everyone was talking about those ads. Our business was successful before John Singleton came along, but those TV ads were the turning point in the fortunes of this company because they accelerated our growth exponentially.
Gerry Harvey
You’ve got to be a trader. I know how to buy and sell. I must have been fairly good at it because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to get where I got.
Gerry Harvey
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