{"id":143811,"date":"2025-11-19T23:53:09","date_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:53:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/143811\/"},"modified":"2025-11-19T23:53:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-19T23:53:09","slug":"tahua-group-admits-mistake-in-buying-torpedo7-in-rare-look-into-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/143811\/","title":{"rendered":"Tahua Group admits mistake in buying Torpedo7 in rare look into business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Then last month, it announced plans to transition all remaining Torpedo7 physical stores to The Outlet and move Torpedo7 to online-only by the end of February 2026.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a decisive move \u2013 one that protects the business, grows our reach and sets us up for long-term success,\u201d Harper said at the time.<\/p>\n

Harper told the retail property conference that The Outlet model was doing \u201camazingly well\u201d considering it had gone from an idea to opening in just 12 weeks.<\/p>\n

He said Kiwis were forced to come to Auckland if they wanted to do outlet shopping, naming competitors Manawa Bay and Dress Smart, but that The Outlet was designed to take the format to the regions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe risk is we\u2019re shoehorning a new idea and a new business into an old format, and there is a real risk in that. Some of these stores won\u2019t work, we will have to pivot, but it is an amazing idea.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tahua, which also owns the licences for Starbucks, Burger King, Popeyes, Hannahs and Number One Shoes in New Zealand, is no stranger to turning businesses around.<\/p>\n

The company began in 2018 after its founders, Paul and Liz Blackwell, Rob and Jacqueline Redwood, John Elliott and Harper came together to purchase Starbucks\u2019 New Zealand operations in October 2018.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s happened in a hurry, but it was a lifetime in the making. Now it is a very significant business, but it was born just before Covid,\u201d Harper said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI like to think it was born in the biggest recession of our time, so the fact that we\u2019ve actually developed a business through this time has been an epic journey.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"RogerRoger Harper, managing director of Tahua Group, said the group had completed four acquisitions, five turnaround plans and created three startups in its time<\/p>\n

Tahua Group has also branched out into healthcare with its brand Resonate Health.<\/p>\n

Harper described the group as a \u201cfast growth company\u201d that sets out to build businesses of scale in New Zealand.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost of us have been retailers for most of our lives in small to large operations. Two of our shareholders are former Pak\u2019nSave owners, in which one started as a shelf stacker, so we know New Zealand retail and we know New Zealand business very well.<\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of our businesses have been in distress, but they\u2019ve had strong market positioning and great brand recognition. We look for unique strategic growth opportunities, so we\u2019re not looking to maintain businesses, we\u2019re looking to grow businesses and within our three sectors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harper said the group had completed four acquisitions, five turnaround plans and created three start-ups in its time.<\/p>\n

He said that when the group describes the business, particularly to banks and funders, Tahua wants to create a platform business.<\/p>\n

By this, he meant creating a technology and services platform in the background that can serve all businesses in the portfolio, allowing them to take cost out while still offering plenty of capabilities.<\/p>\n

Transforming businesses<\/p>\n

Across the group\u2019s brands, it has over 230 trading locations, with a mix of pre-existing property and property developed by Tahua Group itself, including 18 drive-throughs in 15 months – something Harper believes hadn\u2019t been done before.<\/p>\n

Along with developing property, Tahua has also made changes to each of its brands to varying success.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s been quite an experience and quite a steep learning curve. We had to become property developers because we took on rolling out Popeyes. <\/p>\n

\u201cVery quickly we realised that we weren\u2019t going to be able to roll out Popeyes unless we were willing to buy the properties and develop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Popeyes has grown to nine locations since its initial launch in April 2024, and the business has previously signalled that it would like to have a network of roughly 40 stores nationwide.<\/p>\n

\"AA brass band was present to celebrate the opening of the first Popeyes Chicken restaurant in Auckland.<\/p>\n

In its footwear stores, the business has substantially downsized, dropping from 114 stores when it started out to just 58 stores now.<\/p>\n

Harper said Number One Shoes was the format to win out during Covid, with the service\/mall-focused model of Hannahs no longer working in New Zealand compared to big box, self-service retail.<\/p>\n

Burger King (BK) now has 80 stores across the country, with Harper noting that the business\u2019 turnover is \u201ca lot higher\u201d than the $170 million it was making when it was taken over in 2019.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe didn\u2019t go into a refurbishment programme immediately when we took over Burger King because refurbs cost a lot of money and their refurb programme wasn\u2019t working, we didn\u2019t like the design.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe paused and we fixed a lot of equipment that needed to be fixed, including the headsets so that people could hear the ordering. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe improved the quality of our service at BK before we went and spent a lot of money on something which we didn\u2019t know whether it was going to work. We\u2019re now spending a shed load of money rolling these refurbs out and they\u2019re really working.\u201d<\/p>\n

Harper described the business as an \u201cabused child in need of love\u201d, believing the previous owners neglected the staff, culture, customers and locations.<\/p>\n

When it comes to Starbucks, Harper said no store in its network had been refurbished in 10 years, and that no new stores had opened over the same time period.<\/p>\n

\"TahuaTahua Group purchased the Torpedo7 brand off of The Warehouse Group for $1 in 2024. Photo \/ Jason Oxenham.<\/p>\n

Changing retail market<\/p>\n

Harper said artificial intelligence is the retail industry\u2019s latest disruptor, but that others exist all over the business.<\/p>\n

\u201cProbably the biggest disruptor for our business has been channel change over the years. First it was online, but most recently in hospitality it\u2019s delivery, pickup, mobile order and pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese things have been massive disruptors in our business and having to move so quickly is really challenging but exciting on the other hand.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said costs for the business are increasing, with consumer price index (CPI) leases being one, and joked that it would be nice to have \u201cnegative inflation\u201d.<\/p>\n

Another is the move to \u201cvalue\u201d, referencing that in the United States, roughly 80% of retail is purchased at some form of discount.<\/p>\n

The demise of traditional marketing models and media is another, particularly for quick service restaurant (QSR) businesses.<\/p>\n

Harper also acknowledged how the culture of customers had changed to become more violent post-Covid, noting how one of the business\u2019 staff was almost murdered in one of its stores by an angry customer.<\/p>\n

\u201cSomething got broken in New Zealand during Covid, and it hasn\u2019t quite yet been fixed. There\u2019s a lot of anger there, and actually giving a great customer experience or thinking about customer safety and staff safety has become a major challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AnAn artist rendering of what Tahua Group’s proposed Tirau Starbucks and Burger King development could look like.<\/p>\n

Despite the challenges facing the New Zealand retail industry, Tahua Group is not showing any signs of slowing down.<\/p>\n

According to Harper, roughly 10% of New Zealand\u2019s population comes through one of its businesses or on to one of its websites every week right across the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe get a very good feel for what is happening out there, and I can tell you right now, not a lot. The economy has been banging along the bottom for now quite a long time, and we all remain very hopeful that it will get better.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re retailers, we have to be optimistic, masochistic, and we\u2019re hoping that this Christmas is the turning point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.<\/p>\n

Listen and subscribe to the Today in Business<\/a> podcast \u2013 the top headlines from the NZ Herald business team summarised and delivered by an artificial intelligence (AI) voice as an easily digestible recap.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Then last month, it announced plans to transition all remaining Torpedo7 physical stores to The Outlet and move…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":143812,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[16489,665,3241,4463,138,5098,3936,71,209,78,296,1426,13457,3935,28166,2683,5969,111,139,69,10142,1136,29058,8205,312,97018,68330,664,18840,5977],"class_list":["post-143811","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-admits","tag-around","tag-bought","tag-brand","tag-business","tag-buying","tag-director","tag-from","tag-group","tag-in","tag-into","tag-investment","tag-look","tag-managing","tag-mistake","tag-move","tag-much","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-paid","tag-private","tag-quickly","tag-rare","tag-says","tag-tahua","tag-torpedo7","tag-turn","tag-warehouse","tag-which"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143811","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143811"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143811\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/143812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143811"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143811"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143811"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}