Sideways - Surf Outlets is a Queensland-based surf retail chain with six stores across South East Queensland and northern New South Wales, including locations at Burleigh Heads, Ashmore, Kawana, Maroochydore, Noosa Heads, and Tweed Heads, plus a warehouse operation. The business stocks surfboards, clothing, skateboards, and accessories from major brands, and operates its own surfboard label with boards imported directly from an Indonesian factory. Keeping retail prices competitive is central to how Sideways operates, and that means managing overheads closely.
With six retail stores and a warehouse each drawing power, energy is a material cost line. Each site operates on its own NMI, and the variation in size, trading hours, and usage profiles across the portfolio makes energy procurement a genuinely complex task. When one quarterly bill came in at $9,000 against a typical $6,000, it made clear that a site-by-site approach to energy was leaving money on the table.
Checkout Sideways - Surf Outlets range at sideways.com.au
A spike in one store's energy bill, from around $6,000 to $9,000 in a single quarter, flagged that something wasn't right. With no systematic way to track or verify consumption across sites, there was no visibility into whether the increase was a billing error, a usage problem, or simply a bad rate. The business needed answers, and the tools to find them.
Sideways was approaching energy retailers store by store, which meant losing any advantage that came from negotiating as a portfolio. Individual sites rarely attract competitive pricing from retailers, and without volume or broker relationships behind them, the rates on offer reflected that. The CFO was spending time shopping around, but the structure of how they were going to market was working against them.
Managing seven separate energy accounts in-house meant staff time going into chasing better deals, querying charges, and handling billing issues. That time had a real cost, and the results weren't matching the effort. Moving to a broker meant transferring that workload to a team with the market access and expertise to produce better outcomes.
Watt Utilities energy manager Dean took on the Sideways portfolio with a site-by-site review of every NMI across all seven sites. With nearly two decades of retailer relationships and tariff expertise behind the team, the approach went well beyond rate comparison. Dean analysed the consumption profile and tariff structure at each site, negotiated with retailers who were genuinely competitive for Sideways' usage footprint, and secured rates that weren't available to the business approaching the market independently.
Each of Sideways' seven sites has its own usage profile, trading hours, and load characteristics. Dean worked through the tariff options at each location, matching the right structures to each site's actual consumption pattern. Rates were negotiated across the portfolio, giving Sideways the purchasing weight of a consolidated client rather than seven individual accounts going to market separately.
One retail site was consistently drawing more power than its size and trading hours would suggest. Dean arranged an on-site meter check with an electrician to investigate. No single fault was identified, though the building's age and insulation were likely contributing factors. Watt Utilities provided practical guidance on energy-use behaviours and reduction strategies, and the client's response to that level of effort says as much about the relationship as the savings do.
With Watt Utilities managing the energy accounts across all sites, the internal time Sideways was spending on energy procurement and billing queries shifted to the broker. Terry and the CFO no longer needed to chase retailers or manually review rates across seven separate accounts. The work was handled by a team with the systems and relationships to do it properly.
saved in energy costs across all sites
to achieve full portfolio savings
managed across 6 retail stores and a warehouse
Over two years, Sideways - Surf Outlets savings are projected at $160,000 across six retail stores and a warehouse. That figure came from a combination of better contract rates across the portfolio, tariff structures matched to each site's usage profile, and sustained attention to consumption at a site level, including hands-on investigation where something didn't look right.
Sideways built their reputation on offering customers genuine value, which means overheads matter. Cutting $160,000 from energy costs across the portfolio over two years gave that margin room to breathe without touching the product or the pricing.
Dean stayed across all seven sites throughout the engagement, matching tariff structures to each location's actual usage and following up when the numbers at one store didn't add up.
The business also freed up the internal time that had been going into energy procurement. Chasing rates, reviewing bills, and managing seven separate accounts is a material admin burden, and removing it gave the team bandwidth to focus elsewhere.
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