Retravision is one of the biggest electrical goods retailers in Australia, and each of its stores is privately owned.

Last Christmas, my family visited a Retravision store. This one is in at one of Melbourne’s south-east Asian community clusters.  It was the kind of neighbourhood where all the store signs are in Chinese, Vietnamese, Thai and Hindu, and where a white Australian person would be vastly outnumbered.

As my parents talked to the salesperson, I wandered around the store. I love electronics so I am easily occupied in such stores. However, an inspection of this Retravision did not yield the typical delights. Currently, I’m interested in noise-cancelling headphones but the headphones section consisted merely of five earbud-style models. The camera section was paltry, with no digital SLRs. I did find three minutes of entertainment on the massage chair.

So if there were no headphones, cameras or computers, what was taking up all the space in the store?

Well, a quarter of the floorspace was devoted entirely to karaoke — speakers, mixers, microphones, amplifiers, disc players. That’s where my parents were, interrogating the salesperson about the specs for a wireless receiver and microphones.

You’re not too surprised, are you, considering the neighbourhood? This Retravision store owner definitely knows his market.