Category
Reporting on the sectors where Australian SMBs live: retail, hospitality, trades, services, manufacturing.
Over the twelve months to November 2025, one in ten Australian cafes, restaurants, and takeaways shut their doors. Three operators on why the aggregate number doesn't capture the mechanism.
Independent retailers have been losing the same dollar, three ways, for eighteen months. The cross-border sellers take the price ceiling. Amazon takes the category share. The landlord takes the rent off the top. The insolvency data says the rest.
The indexation clause is the least-discussed line in a small retailer's lease, and arguably the most consequential. Five years after inflation broke out of the RBA's band, the compounding is showing up in landlord revenue and tenant margin.
Insurance used to be a line item small businesses did not think about. In 2026 it has become a go-or-no-go decision. The mechanism sits partly in the global reinsurance layer and partly in categories no insurer wants to write.
The Australian craft beer failure rate in 2026 is not about bad beer. It is about a structural margin that no amount of taproom traffic can close.
Warm-inland shiraz still clears below $300 a tonne. The premium recovery is real, but it has not reached the Riverland, and the WET rebate cap has not moved in eight years.
Australian home-services work has moved into three apps. The consumer acquisition channel has changed; so has the margin a plumber keeps on a call-out.