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Temple & Webster shares rallied on Monday, the first day of trading since Greater Sydney entered its two-week lockdown on Saturday night, joined by some of the ASX's best known stay-at-home winners of 2020, Redbubble and Kogan.

Temple & Webster, the online homewares and furnishings retailer, surged 10.2 per cent to $11.52 at the closing bell, narrowing its year-to-date loss to 2.4 per cent. Crafts marketplace Redbubble added 8.2 per cent to $3.71 and Kogan.com put on 6.6 per cent to $13, building on Friday's 6 per cent rise.

The broader sharemarket climbed out of the red when NSW Health declared only 18 newly identified cases at its 11am AEST update, down from 30 on Sunday.

Consumer staples and liquor also outperformed on Monday, with Coles, Woolworths, Bunnings owner Wesfarmers and Dan Murphy's owner Endeavour Group all ahead of the ASX 200's flat return. Woolworths added 2.9 per cent to $37.85 and Endeavour 3.8 per cent to $6.33.

ASX 2020 debutant Adore Beauty was also able to capitalise, closing 2.5 per cent higher to $4.56. Adore Beauty floated at $6.75 a share; the company’s upcoming financial 2021 results will mark the end of escrow arrangements for shares held by pre-IPO investors, including Quadrant Growth Fund and founders Kate Morris and James Height.

While continued lockdowns caused by the pandemic have created some anxiety for investors in retail property across the country, the massive shift to online shopping has created a way for this sector to reinvent itself.

Online retailing has grown exponentially, but having a bricks-and-mortar presence is critical for successful retailers. These occupiers are, however, requiring increased levels of warehousing space that is preferably not too far from their retail outlets.

Investors need to appreciate the business of the occupier and have a holistic view of their operations rather than just the individual property that will provide opportunity to create a better asset with better returns.

Online retailing is forecast to grow strongly in the coming years. Over 2020, online purchases increased a staggering 57 per cent on the previous year with 9 million Australians spending a record $50.46 billion online, an Australian Post report shows.

As a percentage of total retail, online sales accounted for more than 16 per cent – a proportion that was not expected until at least 2023, according to previous projections.

A Shopify survey showed that the expansion of online sales has been explosive since the pandemic, with retailers recovering nearly all their losses made during the first six weeks via online sales. More than 60 per cent of shoppers now start their shopping journey via digital platforms.

Catch is growing its logistics network with a new fulfilment centre to be built in Moorebank in south-west Sydney.

A 36,000 square metre plot will hold the business’ first DC outside of Victoria, which aims to help Catch keep pace with the impressive growth in e-commerce seen since the pandemic begun, with Australia Post having seen online purchases jump 57 per cent year-on-year.

The site is scheduled to open in the first quarter of 2022, and will be Catch’s most technologically sophisticated distribution centre to date.

“We are thrilled to be opening our first fulfilment centre in New South Wales, expanding our national footprint and helping our customers get the products they need when they need them, right across Australia,” Catch managing director Pete Sauerborn said.

“The Sydney fulfilment centre will allows us to serve customers more quickly and efficiently, particularly in New South Wales and Queensland.”

The Sydney facility will further Catch’s automation efforts in its fulfilment centres, and will create advanced manufacturing, robotics and intelligent systems jobs in New South Wales.

Last year the business said it was adding over 100 autonomous robots to its Victorian distribution centre – the largest rollout of autonomous robots across Australia and New Zealand, and a decision which unlocked the ability for Catch to manage an additional 80,000 product lines.

Stockland is set to build its first data centre as part of the listed property company’s ambitious M_Park  development in Sydney’s tech hub of Macquarie Park.

M_Park also includes a new headquarters for pharmaceutical giant Johnson & Johnson and two other office buildings spread over the 30,000sq m site.

The NSW Government rushed through approval for the data centre, which it said has an end value of $264 million, as a State Significant Development (SSD).

“Fast-tracking data centre assessments are a key part of the NSW government’s planning reforms,” said Planning Minister Rob Stokes.

It’s understood the five-storey data centre will be a hyper-scale facility leased to a major cloud computing provider, believed to be Amazon Web Services.

Stockland declined the opportunity to comment yesterday beyond confirming it has “obtained SSDA approval for the construction and operation of a data centre at our M_Park site.”

It added: “Stockland has entered into a heads of agreement executed with a data centre operator for a building at M_Park.”

According to a scoping study commissioned by Stockland, the facility includes 6300sq m of data halls, 3215sq m office space with more than 13,000sq m set aside for ‘electrical and mechanical services’.

There will be 10 diesel generators, two on each level, and capacity to store 360,000 litres of fuel in a series of underground tanks.

Construction is expected to start September and be finished by March, 2023.

Planning Minister Rob Stokes has prioritised approvals for data centres, allocating extra resources and lowering the threshold for them to become State Significant Developments from $50 million to $30 million.

The data centre will occupy almost 50 per cent of the three hectare M_Park site at the junction of Khartoum Road and Talavera Road in Macquarie Park, which is attracting a lot of development interest.

Demolition has already started elsewhere on the M_Park site to make way for the three new buildings comprising the commercial precinct.

Apart from the new Johnson & Johnson headquarters, Stockland is building a 10-level office tower at 11 Khartoum Road with 16,000sq m of lettable space, plus a third structure, the details of which are not available.

Stockland also acquired four hectares next door at 1-5 Khartoum Road last year in a put and call option with Johnson & Johnson Medical Pty Ltd, which has an office on the site.

The new head office for Johnson & Johnson at M_Park will bring together 820 employees from around Sydney.

Louise Mason, Stockland’s chief executive commercial property, said at the time that Macquarie Park is a key strategic focus for the business.

“The transaction aligns with our broader strategy to up-weight our workplace and logistics portfolio,” she said.

“Macquarie Park is a powerhouse underpinned by pharmaceuticals, health, technology, government and education and is predicted to become NSW’s second largest economy in the coming years.”

She said the combined sites offer a “potential” consolidated development opportunity worth excess of $1.5 billion.

Amazon Australia is getting into resale with the local launch of Amazon Warehouse – the online giant’s storefront for pre-owned and open-box items across a range of products.

The items on Amazon Warehouse will be checked over and fulfilled by Amazon staff, can be eligible for free delivery for Prime members, and will be discounted.

“Items are returned to Amazon for many reasons – sometimes a product is just not what a customer is looking for, or perhaps there’s a cosmetic defect or the packaging is damaged,” said Amazon Australia country manager Matt Furlong.

“These items can’t then be sold as new, but are still great quality and are in good working condition. Amazon Warehouse gives these products a new lease on life and offers customers an even wider selection to choose from.”

Items will be graded on a spectrum from “Like New”, “Very Good”, “Good” and “Acceptable”, which determines discounting, and will be available across 30 categories, such as smartphones, laptops, books, apparel and toys, among others.

According a 2020 resale report from ThredUp, the online second-hand market is expected to grow from $7 billion in 2019 to $35 billion in 2024.

Global Fashion Group has achieved carbon neutrality across its operations in Australia, New Zealand, Southeast Asia, Latin America and the CIS.

The group now uses 100 per cent renewable energy across its nine fulfilment centres across the globe, used by subsidiary businesses such as The Iconic and Zalora, while offsetting any carbon generated by purchasing high quality carbon credits from renewable energy projects across China, India and Brazil.

Australia’s The Iconic led the way in getting the business off the grid, shifting its own operations to a renewable energy provider in 2020, while fulfilment centres in other parts of the world purchased Renewable Energy Certificates to offset their own operations.

“We’re incredible proud to have achieved this sustainability milestone as a global group and consequently be the first major ANZ multi-brand fashion, sports and lifestyle retailer to claim carbon neutrality in our own operations,” said The Iconic chief executive Erica Berchtold.

“Being a responsible corporate citizen is integral to who we are and to be part of a group equally committed to pioneering environment progress adds significant impact to achieving a more sustainable future for not only The Iconic, but our broader ANZ retail ecosystem.”

GFG’s chief sustainability officer Jaana Quaintance-James said the announcement is the business’ way of celebrating World Environment Day, which takes place tomorrow, Saturday 5 June.

“We have reached an inflection point as a global community whereby the impetus for the transition to a low carbon economy is undeniable,” Quaintance-James said.

“We recognise there is much work ahead of us to reduce our footprint and therefore formalising our carbon mitigation strategy is an important step to support our transition. While the purchase of offsets and renewable energy certificates will not distract us from true reduction efforts, they mark an important milestone in GFG’s journey.”

Zalora chief executive Gunjan Soni said the business is proud to be a sustainable leader in Southeast Asia, and that this announcement sets a precedent to what is possible and responsible for businesses.

“We are so proud to be a part of a group that recognises the importance of our role in helping to fight the climate crisis together,” Soni said.

“As the leading fashion and lifestyle e-commerce player that serves millions of shoppers across Southeast Asia, we recognise the importance of shaping a sustainable fashion ecosystem in the region.”

• Australian developers are negotiating as much as six-figure raises as the battle for tech talent goes up a gear.
• Closed international borders are seeing companies resort to all manner of incentives to try to fill vacancies, with some engineering roles remaining unfilled almost four months on since they were posted.
• Without a fully vaccinated population and the movement of migrants into the country, many in the industry expect the skill shortages will get worse and fear Australia will become less competitive as its digital economy falls behind.

Australia’s closed borders might have saved the country from the worst of the pandemic, but the hardline measure hasn’t come cheap, with the true cost – to individuals, businesses, and entire industries – yet to be counted.

While most Australians might be upset their European summers are still at least another year away, it is the free movement of skilled workers into the country that is already beginning to hurt the economic recovery, with businesses unable to find the people they need to grow.

“The border closures are preventing top talent from entering our markets so everyone is fighting for a minute amount of local talent, resulting in huge salary increases,” businessman and rich lister Nick Bell told Business Insider Australia.

With Australia having long-suffered skill shortages when it comes to tech, Bell says job candidates are now demanding salaries 50% higher than before the pandemic.

As a result, developers are securing raises overnight worth $50,000 a year and heaping budgetary pressure on businesses as they emerge from 2020.

Other industry sources told Business Insider Australia that in some extreme cases six-figure raises are being thrown around.

That is of course if businesses can even find workers in the first place. Bell, who owns 12 different digital agencies, says he is advertising widely and across social media, engaging multiple recruiters and even offering $5,000 referral fees in a bid to find people to continue expanding.

Baraja is an Australian startup developing systems for autonomous vehicles. While it managed to raise $40 million in March, it says employees are proving difficult to find.

“We’re essentially doing things that haven’t been done before which does mean we have a very small and select pool of talent to draw from worldwide,” co-founder and CEO Federico Collarte said.

“In addition, we’re a fast growing business and our growth is reliant on finding the right people.”

It is struggling to fill 21 different roles in Australia right now, with systems, software, and optical engineers in such short supply that some roles have been sitting vacant for almost four months.

With everything now digitised, huge industries from hospitality to banking are now feeling the pinch. Take online marketplace FoodByUs, which connects restaurants with wholesalers, and has been growing as fast as they can hire.

“We’ve doubled our team in the past twelve months across our Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane offices, and trying to get talent in Australia to support our growth has been really hard,” co-founder Ben Lipschitz said.

“We have a thorough process for hiring to ensure we keep getting the best talent but while the borders are closed the ‘best talent’ pool is way more limited than it ever had been.”

Australia could lose its global standing

It is clearly presenting a coup for tech workers who are now in positions to extract more than ever from prospective employers.

It is a distortion that could spread to other sectors as well, according to the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA). The central bank anticipates that wages for most Australians aren’t likely to grow until overall unemployment is slashed to all-time lows, but that closed borders will produce pay rises not seen in years for a lucky few.

Money aside though, it does present another challenge even for those who can secure new workers.

“The outliers that would never really get pushed forward for jobs are now getting work in roles that they shouldn’t be,” financial services digital consultant Chris Tilling said.

The risk then becomes that businesses end up addled with expensive workers who can’t deliver anyway, eventually producing inferior digital products.

But beyond that, Tilling sees closed borders, as a result of a bungled vaccine rollout, as creating a “missed opportunity” for Australia.

“Australia innovates really well but we don’t commercialise it as well as other countries. But the ones we compete with directly are those like Israel that are pretty well inoculated now,” he said.

“The challenge we have is that if we don’t open up then we could end up lower down the white collar food chain.”

A lack of talent is going to be felt in Australia for years to come

The longer the borders remain closed, and the longer it takes to vaccinate Australia more broadly, the more encumbered Australia is going to become.

According to a Google study conducted earlier this year, 42% of Australian businesses reported that local innovation was mainly being held back by a lack of human capital, with the figure expected to surge higher this year.

“Digital transformation and Cloud adoption is more important than ever before as the economy and markets shifted in the wake of COVID-19, but one of the biggest challenges that Australian enterprises are facing is a shortfall of skilled talent,” Google Cloud ANZ director of customer engineering Matt Zwolenski said.

The shortages predate any public health scare, with the local industry struggling to keep up with the demands of business, with security worryingly being one of areas most let down. To combat it, Google has launched a Skills Challenge to offer no-cost training to those looking to upskill.

“One major reason they cite is the rate of technological change is outpacing skills development,” Zwolenski said.

“While many organisations have training programs in place, they aren’t robust enough to keep up with the rate of change in technology. And a lack of skilled talent is not only a barrier to innovation, many organisations will take a financial hit as a result of skills gaps.”

The failure to properly train Australian workers was likely a challenge that would have been better addressed years ago, but it’s not too late to start making amends.

Several industry figures told Business Insider Australia that more needs to be done to improve education opportunities in the country, as universities continue to lag behind.

It’s a challenge at least publicly recognised by the Morrison government which pledged $1.2 billion to the industry as part of its May Budget, including a $100 million digital skills package.

“We must keep our foot on the digital accelerator to secure our economic recovery from COVID-19,” the Prime Minister said at the time.

The handbrake for now appears firmly on though, with impact of those policies some way off. As businesses take who they can get, there may at least be a silver lining for some.

Boutique tech consultancy firm State of Matter says workplaces are not only having to do better in order to keep and attract the right people, but there are greater internal opportunities for those that stay.

“We’re doubling down on motivating, training and supporting our existing team members and giving them stretch opportunities, where as previously we might have looked to hire externally,” consultancy director Alex Lal said.

Others have something even more meaningful to gain.

“Right now, we’re actually looking to sponsor people that are already here and whose student visa status is about to change,” Tilling said.

“So we’re going through that process now to retain them because we don’t actually lose them altogether.”

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos announced earlier this year that he was stepping down as the tech giant’s chief executive officer. 

And on Wednesday, Bezos told shareholders that he will officially leave the position on July 5, a “sentimental” date – the same day that Amazon was incorporated in 1994.

In a letter to employees, Bezos said he will transition to executive chairman and will focus on “new products and early initiatives” in the third quarter.

He will be replaced by Andy Jassy, the current CEO of Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud platform.

Here are 5 things to know about the new CEO, based on what over a dozen current and former employees told Insider in interviews published in January.

Jassy has been at Amazon for about as long as Bezos has, 24 years to be exact.

Jassy joined Amazon in 1997, the same year the company went public. The 53-year-old built AWS from the ground up within the past two decades and became CEO of the cloud platform in 2016. Analyst Dan Ives described him to Insider in a previous interview as “one of the most powerful leaders not just within the cloud and tech sector but in the world of business.”

Jassy is a close confidant of Bezos.

Jassy served as a so-called “shadow” advisor to Bezos at one point, joining the chief executive in high-level meetings. In his letter to staff announcing his exit as CEO, Bezos said Jassy will be an “outstanding leader.”

Jassy is one of the highest-paid executives at Amazon.

He has raked in a total of more than $20 million within the past three years. In 2016 alone, Jassy earned over $36 million while Bezos made about $1.7 million in total, according to CNBC.

Jassy was reportedly considered for the role of CEO at Microsoft and Uber.

Ex-Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer approached Jassy at one point about replacing him as chief executive of the company, a person familiar with the discussion told Insider’s Ashley Stewart and Eugene Kim. There was also a rumor that Jassy was considered to take over as Uber CEO after Travis Kalanick stepped down in 2017.

He’s outspoken in regard to political and social issues.

Jassy has spoken out against the police killings of Black Americans and in favor of court decisions to make it illegal to discriminate against members of the LGBTQ community, among other calls to action. Jassy has also spoken out against former President Donald Trump’s contempt for Amazon and helmed AWS amid the company’s decision to ban Parler, a social-media app popular among the far-right.

International retail behemoth Amazon’s expansion into the Australian market is running ahead of schedule, with the company expecting demand to continue at a pace even after months of COVID-boosted sales.

Craig Fuller, Amazon Australia’s head of operations, told The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald the business’ growth in the local market was beating expectations, with sales almost doubling over 2020 to top $1 billion for the first time.

“Our expansion plans, in terms of putting down a footprint ... has probably just been brought forward a little bit, but in terms of where we thought we’d be ... we’re a little bit ahead,” he said.

Amazon, which is a $US1.6 trillion ($2 trillion) business globally, has taken a slow approach to the Australian market, opting to grow its users gradually rather than blitz shoppers with massive marketing campaigns.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated boom in online shopping appears to have turned this approach on its head. Along with its soaring sales, the company has vastly expanded its fulfilment network in Australia, opening 11 new sites in the past 12 months.

“Those 11 buildings have really doubled our footprint,” Mr Fuller said. “We’re in all major capital cities...and we’re continuing to expand our delivery service across the regional cities of Australia.”

Amazon will also open its new 200,000 square foot robotic warehouse in Sydney later this year, which will house more than 11 million items and will be largely automated, though it will still rely on people to pick and pack orders.

COVID-19 has been a boon to almost every major online retailer over the past year, as locked-down shoppers shifted their spend online. However, as the country has begun to open up, some companies such as Adore Beauty and Kogan have reported a slowing in growth.

Mr Fuller said he didn’t see demand beginning to taper off yet, noting Australia’s overall penetration of online shopping, which hit around 16 per cent during 2020, still paled in comparison to other developed countries, with the executive believing there were many shoppers who have not yet embraced online shopping.

“The breadth of shopper base, that’s going to be sustained and that’s what’s going to help grow the business,” he said. “We think there’s a lot of opportunity left for online shopping in Australia to be a good complementary service to traditional brick and mortar type stores.”

Amazon will kick off its annual ‘Prime Day’ sales event on June 21 which offers a range of discounts on various products over a 65-hour period. Prime subscriptions have been another major driver of growth for Amazon locally, with revenue from the service almost tripling to $90 million across 2020.

Ruslan Kogan, the founder and CEO of online retailer Kogan.com, has urged shoppers to stock up on Christmas gifts now to avoid higher prices later in the year on new stocks of LED TVs and other products made with computer chips.

Mr Kogan told AFR Weekend he has warehouses full of stock waiting to be sold at discounted prices. Earlier on Friday the group slashed its earnings outlook, blaming miscalculations on inventory and higher warehousing costs.

“There’s never been a better time to be a customer. We have 31 warehouses chock-a-block full of inventory of high-quality product,” he said.

“From what we’re seeing in supply chains, LED TVs, are going to be more expensive at the end of the year than they are now. Panel prices are going up, and there’s a very widely talked about chip shortage as well – so [prices will be higher for] anything that contains computer chips.

“All of the market indicators are pointing to the fact that you should be doing your Christmas shopping right now, and buying products for Christmas today because they will get more expensive at the end of the year.“

Heavy discounting is a win for consumers but it puts retailers’ margins under more pressure and represents a loss for investors, who wiped $148 million off Kogan.com’s market capitalisation after the company warned its underlying operating performance would be worse than previously expected.

Adjusted earnings before interest tax, depreciation and amortisation for the year ending June 30 are likely to total $58 million - $63 million, an 11 per cent to 18 per cent miss against market expectations, the company said.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing. We can play it over and over and we would probably make the exact same decisions again.

— Ruslan Kogan, Kogan.com founder

The shares hit their lowest point this year, plunging 14.3 per cent to $8.70 on Friday. Mr Kogan felt the squeeze in his wallet with the value of his 15 per cent stake falling by more than $22 million to $138.9 million.

Kogan.com bet heavily that the “once-in-a-century” demand created by the pandemic lockdowns would last.

Over the first half of fiscal 2021, Kogan.com doubled in size as consumers shopped online, and significantly expanded its inventory holdings. It also boosted its logistics footprint to 31 facilities from, many of them established in the last five months.

In late April, the online retailer that sells everything from electronics to running shoes to toys and pet products, said gross revenue climbed more than 32 per cent in the March quarter. This rate of growth was well-down on the boom half-year to December, in which revenue jumped 97 per cent to $638 million because of record pandemic spending.

After nine months of elevated consumption, the company had to make a call to be sure it had enough product, Mr Kogan said.

“Hindsight is a wonderful thing,” Mr Kogan said. “We can play it over and over, and we as a management team were looking at the situation, and we would probably make the exact same decisions again.”

Profitability has also been hit by the cost of options awarded after last November’s annual meeting, by $5.8 million in additional shipping charges as products sat in port longer, and higher warehousing costs.

There is also a provision of $5.1 million for the final payment tranches of Mighty Ape, which it acquired last December for $122 million.

The news implies the business is break-even on an underlying EBITDA basis in the fourth quarter, said RBC analyst Tim Piper.

“Some of the issues impacting margins and costs are transitory and will be resolved, however, we remain of the view FY22 earnings expectations are too high and expect material consensus downgrades,” he wrote in an analyst note.

A big concern was the current level of consumer demand that has moderated in recent months despite the heavy price discounting, promotional activity and elevated marketing costs, Mr Piper said.

The shipping issue was resolved in April, and Kogan.com does not expect any material issues to arise in future. Customer demand in the month carried over from the third quarter – but below the surging levels seen in the nine months ended December 31.

The price inflation and higher international shipping costs, combined with more promotions will crunch gross margins and has led to higher marketing costs.

“We’ve made the business better along the way, but when you’re dealing in an environment where consumer demand can swing in such quantum, it made it a difficult environment,” Mr Kogan said.

He added that the longer term fundamentals for the company remain attractive given Kogan’s position in the Australian and New Zealand online markets, and with online retail sales currently only accounting for a small percentage of total retail sales in both nations.

Mr Piper said the coming months look “challenging”, but working through the inventory backlog will help improve margins, and the end of demurrage costs implies the business is heading in the right direction.