1982: The Warehouse

November 3, 2023

By AHNZ

The Warehouse, New Zealand’s great retailer, is now in its 40s since opening their first store on Wairau Road in Auckland on c.3 November, 1982 . It created a fury with competitors who set their local government attack dogs to shut it down on grounds of zoning. Stephen Tindall shut it down alright and moved it to Takapuna CBD where it hurt those anti-competitive goons all the more!

Best I can tell is that founder, Tindall, had a First Mover advantage on a new deregulated importing environment. Muldoon’s National 3.0 Government was ‘liberalising’ by cutting off the Old Boys clubs from their exclusive licensing rights to peddle goods to New Zealanders. Our retail opportunities were lagging behind the rest of the world because of these political patronages. If Kiwis visited Australia they could find incredible products not for sale at home.

Tindall is clearly a genius but part of his success was navigating political corruption where other entrepreneurs were stymied. Rod Duke had done much the same thing in 1975 with Briscoes, subverting the local zoning laws by cunning tricks.

“40 years ago we opened our first store. ” – The Warehouse, Facebook (3 November, 2023)

“Tindall, who had a job at the Reserve Bank when he was at school, said in the early days he had to cash in his superannuation and sell his caravan to invest in the latest technology of the time for the first store – about $40,000 for a state-of-the-art computer system that managed stock.” – NZ Herald (2019)

I think Tindall and Duke, and Ron Briley too, would have been destroyed for what they did except that their risk paid off in the short term and they were able to secure political patronage. They made enough money in their ventures to pay for the protection they needed to grow. Muldoon was a politician who did not mind cutting the throats of old established brand-holders if young new blood would cut a better deal for his New Zealand (aka National 3.0)

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Image ref. Logo from The Radio Vault, Youtube (2022)

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