Global giants are thriving in New Zealand\u2019s retail landscape \u2013 but a Christchurch startup hopes there\u2019s still room for something different.<\/p>\n
To receive The Bulletin in full each weekday,\u00a0sign up here<\/a>.<\/p>\n Ikea\u2019s teething problems, Costco\u2019s coming of age<\/p>\n When Ikea opened at Sylvia Park on December 4, New Zealanders responded like a country long starved of reasonably priced flatpack furniture.\u00a0Aimee Shaw reports in The Post<\/a>\u00a0(paywalled) that half a million customers visited the store in its first month and 1.9 million went to its website, demand that smashed expectations and briefly broke the retailer\u2019s systems. Some fans described the launch as \u201cchaotic on several levels\u201d and \u201cbaffling\u201d for such a seasoned global operator. Ikea NZ manager Johanna Cederl\u00f6f said opening the store and full online shopping on the same day \u2013 a first for Ikea anywhere \u2013 combined with a brand new team left it \u201ca bit overwhelmed\u201d and struggling to complete all the required picking in the opening week, but insisted there was \u201cno stock issue\u201d, just the challenge of moving product from warehouse to shelves fast enough while thousands shopped both online and in store.<\/p>\n Costco, in contrast, is a few years down the road from opening-day chaos and now showing what happens when a big-box newcomer beds in.\u00a0Erin Johnson reports for Stuff<\/a>\u00a0that the company has posted a $9.6m profit in its third year of trading from a single Westgate warehouse.\u00a0Supermarket News<\/a>\u00a0notes that moving into the black with just one store strengthens the case for expansion. Costco is in the early stages of planning for a second site at Drury in South Auckland, intended to serve both the city\u2019s south and Waikato.<\/p>\n Queen St\u2019s glittering new tenants<\/p>\n On Queen St in Auckland, a different kind of multinational retail is taking shape.\u00a0In the Herald<\/a>\u00a0(paywalled), Tom Raynel reports that lower Queen Street is now home to a swathe of luxury retailers, including Prada, Dior and Louis Vuitton, with Cartier confirmed to open in autumn and another yet-to-be-named luxury retailer close to announcing plans. Into this cluster will arrive Faradays, a $30m three-level, 3,000 square metre department store at 131 Queen St, in the heritage Milne & Choyce building, which co-founder Eddie von Dadelszen says will offer a range of \u201ccurated, independent luxury formats\u201d plus a restaurant and swish add-ons like valet parking.<\/p>\n Veteran fashion PR Murray Bevan says he\u2019s excited about Faradays but is worried the luxury boom is squeezing out locals. \u201cWe\u2019re losing the nuance of that tapestry of local brands, which used to make up more than probably 50% of people\u2019s shopping carts. I worry that the social media algorithm is teaching us that actually bigger is better.\u201d<\/p>\n The yellow pharmacy reshaping NZ retail<\/p>\n While luxury brands are colonising Queen Street, Chemist Warehouse has transformed the shopping experience nearly everywhere else.\u00a0In The Spinoff<\/a>, Alex Casey tracks the rise of the \u201cbig yellow discount pharmacy\u201d from a single St Lukes outlet in 2017 to 68 stores nationwide by late 2025, including 35 in Auckland and pairs of branches just a few hundred metres apart in multiple parts of the country. That, she notes, represents an expansion of 6,700% in eight years. The human cost is real: Independent Pharmacy Group retail scientist John Saywell tells Casey that about 150 owner-operated pharmacies have closed in the past five years, and that competing on price is impossible when big chains can soak up hundreds of qualified staff and absorb fees that cost the average pharmacy around $100,000 a year if they try to match them.<\/p>\n To illustrate just how wild the growth looks on paper, Casey unveils \u201chighly credible independent modelling\u201d by The Spinoff\u2019s \u201cdata division\u201d that projects, tongue firmly in cheek, 21,381,376 Chemist Warehouses by 2049 if current trends continue \u2013 a joke, she stresses, but one aimed at a serious question about how many yellow sheds a small country actually needs.\u200b Just today it emerged<\/a>\u00a0that the company has purchased the site of the Par\u0101oa Brewing Co, a brewery and performance venue on the Hibiscus Coast, after the brewery lost its liquor licence due to noise complaints.<\/p>\n Kai Co\u2019s local counter-offer<\/p>\n