Coles versus Woolworths: preparing your retail strategy

Woolworths holds around 38 percent of national grocery and Coles around 29 percent, per the ACCC's 2025 supermarkets inquiry. Beyond that gap, the machinery is close to identical. Each runs a category range review, the scheduled meeting where a buyer decides what stays on shelf and what joins it, roughly every six months. Each requires EDI, electronic data interchange, the system that carries purchase orders and invoices between your business and theirs. Each expects GS1-compliant barcodes, correct pallets, and deliveries that land inside booked windows.

Since 1 April 2025 both operate under the mandatory Food and Grocery Code of Conduct, which puts real penalties behind good-faith dealing and transparency on payments demanded from suppliers. The process at both majors is more documented and more rule-bound than the folklore suggests. That cuts both ways. The rules protect you, and the rules will also be applied to you.

Scale is the first difference. Woolworths' larger share means a national ranging generally moves more volume, which also means a bigger production, working-capital and trade-spend commitment from you.

Payment terms are the second. Woolworths pays small suppliers, defined as under 10 million dollars in turnover with under 1 million dollars of Woolworths purchases, within 14 days group-wide. That materially softens the cash-flow squeeze for a brand at the entry stage. Terms elsewhere are set in your trading terms and vary, so read yours rather than assuming.

The third difference is calendar and category shape. Each retailer runs its own supplier portal, its own review calendar per category, and its own view of where your category is heading. The same product can be a gap in one retailer's range and a duplicate in the other's. That is not something you can control. It is something you can research before you pitch, and most founders do not.

The honest answer to Coles versus Woolworths is that it depends on numbers most founders have not modelled. Three matter most.

Trade spend, the rebates, promotional funding and co-op contributions deducted before you are paid, commonly runs 10 to 25 percent of gross sales in Australian FMCG. Your exact number will differ by retailer, by category and by how hard you promote. Most founders meet their real figure after signing trading terms. Model it before.

Retailer margin varies by category, roughly 25 to 45 percent. Work your pricing waterfall backwards from the shelf price: retailer margin, then trade spend, then freight and fulfilment, down to what reaches you per unit. If that number is negative at one retailer's likely price point and positive at the other's, the strategy question has answered itself.

Compliance cost is the third. Chargebacks, the deductions retailers apply when deliveries or documents fail requirements, typically run 1 to 5 percent of invoice value when compliance fails. A ranging that looks profitable on paper can leak its margin through the loading dock. Last financial year 871 retail businesses hit insolvency for the first time. Most of them did not fail at the buyer meeting. They failed in the arithmetic afterwards.

Pitching both majors at once sounds efficient. Operationally it usually is not. An EDI build takes months, not weeks, and each retailer's is its own project. A first purchase order typically lands one to six months after a ranging win, and the invitation to present at a review can arrive with about two weeks' notice. Running two of those clocks in parallel, with one team and one production line, is how DIFOT, delivered in full and on time, the service measure your buyer checks before your story, gets damaged at both accounts simultaneously.

The stronger sequence for most brands at 100 to 1,000 orders a month is one retailer, serviced properly, with the second approached once the first account's numbers are stable. A good result at one major is also the most persuasive line in your case to the other.

The preparation is the same regardless of which logo is on the door, which is another reason the retailer choice matters less than the readiness work.

The buyer decides the ranging at either retailer. Nobody sells access, and anyone who claims to is describing their marketing. What you control is the quality of the case you walk in with and the state of your numbers when the purchase order arrives.

This modelling is what Built for Retail's Retail-Readiness Sprint exists to do: a fixed-fee, roughly four-week build of your real trade spend, pricing waterfall, review calendar and compliance gap list, single-retailer or multi-retailer scope, and you keep the model either way. Our team has ranged four brands across Chemist Warehouse, Woolworths, Coles and Priceline as the agent, including Dr Pickles, on Woolworths and Coles shelves today. Past rangings never promise future ones. Sometimes the model's answer is not yet, and that answer is cheaper to hear before the review than after it.