Campion steps into the space left by Wooldridges

NATIONAL school supplier Campion has doubled its expansion plans in light of the gap in the market left by the collapse of major player Wooldridges last month.

As yet, administrator Grant Thornton has been unable to find a buyer for the Wooldridges business, which had a 75 per cent share of the market. 

Campion had been looking to treble the size of its operations in Western Australia, but Wooldridges’ collapse have led it to revise those plans, and it was now aiming to increase the size of its WA operations six-fold.

“Campion now has commitments from 50 per cent of secondary schools in the metropolitan area,” managing director James Cathro said.

“We are also talking with a large number of Wooldridges’ primary school customers on how to overcome their shortages.

“We see the West Australian market as a significant opportunity for us to boost our services; it is fair to say we will see quite significant growth in the Perth market this year.”

Mr Cathro said Campion was looking to open at least two new stores in WA, and had been inspecting some of the premises previously used by Wooldridges.

Although Campion was a relative newcomer to the WA market, having operated here for just over two years, Mr Cathro told WA Business News the company was a specialist in the school supplies industry with 16 years’ experience operating in other states.

Campion has expressed interest in hiring former Wooldridges staff, 90 in all, who are currently owed $1.5 million in wages and entitlements and may have to wait up to four months to receive them.

“We took on a number of staff in the period immediately after the administrators were appointed and subsequently since; we’re still in talks with some of them,” Mr Cathro said.

Campion currently has 32 of its 150 strong national workforce based in WA. 

The first creditors meeting revealed that Wooldridges had a $50 million debt and that its unsecured creditors, who were owed $15 million, were likely to receive less than 10 cents in the dollar.

“We can forecast that we’re not going to be able to sell enough to give satisfaction to all secured lenders and unsecured creditors, who are owed a combined total of $48.5 million,” Grant Thornton partner Matthew Donnelly said.

However, it wasn’t all bad news.

Grant Thornton was able to secure the sale of Wooldridges subsidiary, Fotoworks School Portraits, to Queensland-based company Gembay, which is headed by Natalie Therese, the former owner of Fotoworks who sold the business to Wooldridges in 2008.

Mr Donnelly said that, unless Wooldridges was sold within two weeks, he would have to liquidate its assets.

He attributed Wooldridges’ collapse to the “double whammy risk” of national expansion and its strategic alliance with sole-supplier Corporate Express, which has taken legal action against it.