Godfreys: How Australia’s Oldest Vacuum Chain Collapsed After 93 Years

Shivangi

Jul 18, 2026 3:48 PM IST

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Synopsis

Godfreys survived wars, recessions and the Great Depression, but rising costs, online competition and changing consumer habits ultimately led to the collapse of Australia’s oldest vacuum cleaner retailer.

Every Australian household knew who Godfreys was. For over 90 years it sold vacuum cleaners and cleaning products through hundreds of storefronts around Australia and New Zealand. But by January 2024, the company could not survive the Great Depression era company in an increasingly expensive economy and evolving customer behaviour. It fell into voluntary administration and all stores closed by May that same year. This is the story of how a business developed over 93 years fell apart in four months

About Godfreys

Godfrey’s was a vacuum cleaner retail chain that was one of the biggest in the world. The combined group operated more than 220 stores at its peak across Australia and New Zealand, including both company-owned and franchised outlets. It has 141 company stores plus 28 franchised to reach a total of 169 by the time it collapsed. The company had over 600 employees working directly, excluding those at franchises.

In New Zealand, the company had 16 company-owned stores and 9 franchised stores. Godfreys also had exclusive rights to sell some of the household names including vacuum brands Hoover, Vorwerk, Pullman and Sauber and operated service and repair centres as well as its shops extending far beyond a standard retail footprint.

The Founder Behind the Brand

Godfreys all started back in 1931 when Godfrey Cohen secured approximately 30 second-hand vacuum cleaners at newspaper auctions. Most vacuum sales took place in homes by travelling salesmen, but he began selling them from his family furniture store.

Shortly thereafter, entrepreneur John Johnston discovered Cohen’s tiny enterprise and negotiated a handshake deal with her. They opened up the first real Godfreys store at Prahran Market in Melbourne. Over 70 years the partnership between Cohen and Johnston grew from a second-hand machine stall to an integrated national retail chain.

He died in 2004 and the brand survived by Cohen Godfrey. From a founder-run business to an institutionally owned business, two years later in 2006 the business he founded was sold to private equity firms Pacific Equity Partners and CCMP Capital Asia for $350 million.

Life on the Stock Market

Then in December 2014, Godfrey's was listed on the Australian Securities Exchange under the ticker GFY. The company had 200+ stores at the time of listing, nearly 27% market share in its specialty and was expected to generate around $185M in revenue for the year.

The ASX years were mixed. Godfrey's sales revenue for 2017 was $174.1 million, down 2.9% on the previous year and comparable store sales fell by 7%. That year, the company recorded a net loss of $18.4 million on a reported basis, including a $24 million non-cash write-down. However, earnings before interest, tax, depreciation  remained at $ 14.1 million to give an underlying profit, while net debt was lowered to the level of $ 16.5 million.

In 2018 Godfreys went back to being a private company, having been delisted from the ASX after approximately four years of its struggle as a public company. In 2023, the last full year before the administration, the company brought in total revenue of $187.8 million while employing a staff of 686 across all its subsidiaries.

The Cracks Start Showing

By the early 2020s, the world of retail and Godfreys, had changed dramatically, but not much at Godfreys itself. Big-box retailers that sold all different kinds of appliances under one roof became the default destination for many shoppers, who preferred buying a vacuum along with a fridge or TV rather than taking an extra trip to stores that specialised in floor-cleaning machines. Then came online shopping, which ramped up the pressure even more, people could compare prices and order appliances to be delivered, all without even stepping foot inside a store.

Simultaneously, cost-of-living pressures meant that people were cutting back on non-essential spending too, and a vacuum cleaner is often seen as discretionary. This was because Godfreys had fixed costs associated with running 141 stores, as well as supporting another 28 franchised stores, that is staff wages and operating expenses spread across a very large footprint. That overhead had been a source of strength until demand softened, at that point it became an anchor weighing down its presence in the market.

In a statement, executives cited weak discretionary spending, pressure on operating costs and increasing competition as the common forces weighing on profitability across its store chain, while some stores may have been better off than others.

Voluntary Administration Begins

In Australia and New Zealand, Godfreys Group went into voluntary administration on 30 January 2024. Three PwC partners were appointed to lead the Australian side of the business, while another two PwC partners oversaw the dealings across New Zealand. When it announced the sale, Ahold said its intention was to reorganise its stores rather than close them altogether, with plans to reduce its store count from 169 to approximately 115.

The restructuring plan entailed the rapid closure of 54 stores and as a consequence put around 171 Australian jobs and another 22 New Zealand ones at risk. The business has been buffeted by weaker customer demand linked to cost-of-living pressures, as well as rising operating costs and competition momentum. One of the lead administrators from PwC Craig Crosbie said. During the process, PwC continued trading the company while trying to find a buyer for the business following its restructuring.

Numbers Behind the Failure 

Purely in terms of hard numbers, the narrative is one of fixed costs versus declining revenue. With 141 company stores running, plus a support crew of 28 franchise partners, Godfreys was stuck in rental contracts, overhead costs and inventory agreements designed for a larger, more bustling retail scene. The 2023 revenue of $187.8 million came within a stone’s throw of what the business did as a public company a decade previously, while the burden of running a 169-store network grew heavier in that time.

Dozens of parties were interested in Godfreys and its brand recognition with customers, but just six made indicative bids and none of the offers was enough to save the company. The gap between interest in the brand name and interest in buying the stores is frequently, at some point, one of the surest hints a physical retail store is killed off somewhere.

The Human Cost

The shuttered stores also represented real jobs. In January 2024 commencement of administration, phase one alone put 171 jobs in Australia and 22 in New Zealand on the line against the opening closure of 54 shops. That was only the first wave. In March, when the decision was announced to wind down completely, another 25 head office staff in Australia were made redundant immediately, on top of store-level losses still filtering through the system.

Franchisees also found themselves in a bit of a bind. Stock, supply agreements and brand support for the 28 franchised stores were entirely reliant on Godfreys’ head office. During the wind-down process, franchisees were informed that the company could no longer provide support to them, and only had until 31 March to dispose of stock or return it for credit. Individual franchisees were later sent out of business and some tried to keep their shopfronts functioning under a much-changing name, the Godfreys franchise method fell apart within two months.

The conclusion was vastly different for a company built on partnerships between its founder and his first business partner over 70 years, the formal administration, conducted with external accountants, where employees, and franchisees, learned their fate through official correspondence rather than by way of a boardroom decision they had any role in.

Godfrey’s Could Not Escape the Crowded Market 

The company operated in an Australian floorcare and vacuum cleaner market worth more than $1.3 billion a year. That is a big enough market, but it was never a sun-soaked domain for Godfreys alone. Even before the free-fall, large general retailers such as JB HiFi and Harvey Norman had been steadily squeezing market share away from specialty stores like Godfreys for years, leveraging their size to provide lower prices on a far larger range of products.

And it put pressure from another angle on players who were online only. Kogan. It means Lowe’s (NYSE: LOW) and Amazon could sell the same vacuum cleaners, or even similar ones, for less money than keeping just one physical store open, much less 141 of them. And that meant Godfreys was competing with price, against businesses on a fundamentally lower cost base still, while still trying to carry the rent wages and overheads of a large-scale retail network.

Godfreys attempted to address this over the years by broadening its array of products and concentrating on newer stick-vacuum and cordless goods, which had enjoyed solid growth through much of the period before listing with Texan Dynamics. However, the fundamental problem stayed unchanged: a specialty retailer centred on brick-and-mortar stores was battling bigger multi-line retailers while simultaneously facing more nimble online opponents and that combination turned out to be too much for the store network to withstand going into 2024.