Jaycar is one of the best success stories ever in Australia. A man by the name of Gary Johnston
created the company way back in 1981, originally, he started small and now his company has around
70 stores all around Australia. Remarkably he now has well over a thousand employees at those
stores and what is even more amazing is that his company is very much still Australian owned,
something that can not be said for most others.

Current marketing manager for Jaycar, Murray Roberts had a talk about the roll out of another new
store in Castle Hill in Sydney, the expansion of Jaycar and celebrating the company’s anniversary of
being open for trading for 30 years.

On the 25 th of June, the Castle Hill store was officially opened to the Australian public and it signals
the 73 rd store to be launched down under and Mr. Roberts stated that the open day was a huge
triumph.
Roberts told us that people were even coming in to the store as employees were setting up for the
opening to buy items and he says that when people do that, it can only be a good thing for the
company. Everything is now set up and ready to go and the sales numbers are slowly on the increase
at this early stage and it is all going the way they planned it to be going.

The company’s 30 th birthday is due to be celebrated in 2011 and everyone at the company knows
that it will be a huge year for Jaycar as there are numerous things the company wants to do in the
future.
With the actual birthday celebrations not due until November, Mr. Roberts stated that what the
company was going to do for the celebration was being kept quiet, but they were working on the
idea of giving customers small gifts who come to the store and that these little gifts could include
products that are personalised for the 30 th birthday celebrations as well as neat little devices for
customers too.
On top of all of that, Mark Beard said that with the Castle Hill shop opening its doors, it will most
likely will not be the last shop that Jaycar could add to its long time list of stores in what is truly a
special year for the company.

He says that in Kew, Melbourne, they have another store that will be opening and when that
happens it will bring the total number of stores opened to 74. Add to that another store opening in
Western Australia in Joondalup and the company is opening stores everywhere in its 30 th year.

There will be many more stores that are going to be opened heading towards the end of the year
too. Beard says that they are even in the process of moving some stores into areas that are bigger in
size, in the hopes that they can then have bigger stores and be able to fit more stock in them as
some of their smaller stores cannot cope with the amount of product they currently have.
Business is going great and the company’s development is incredible. Jaycars main competitor has
been for years Dick Smith and in recent years they have stopped being a store that specializes in
electronic products. That has meant that Jaycar has had much more success as their main
competitor has gone away for selling products like them.
Jaycar are hoping to get the attention of people who love doing DIY things around their homes and
they are also hoping that they will be a one stop store that customers can go to in order to get
anything and everything that they need. So, with Dick Smith now out of the picture, Jaycar has their
own area of market that is just for them.

Mr. Beard goes on to say that eventually the company would like to open more stores here around
Australian but also in New Zealand to further grow the company’s footprint.

Mark Beard has been an employee of Jaycar for 14 years and he says that he is liking every minute of
it and there are a number of products that he just can not get enough of as he is someone who loves
electronics and little gadgets. He states that with Jaycar, there are a numerous new products coming
through the doors that he loves and in particular the project kits that they sell, where you can
essentially build something from nothing and then see how it works.

The kits are much like Jaycar, starting from nothing and turning itself into one of the most
sustainable brands in Australia.