Page 49 - HW Sept 2021

then as now
Then as now – 1991 and 2011
30 years of Waipu’s hardware store, from 1991 with John Finlayson, through 2011 with Bruce Roberts and now in 2021 with new owners Dean and Alana McCarthny.
30 YEARS AGO this month, NZ Hardware Journal’s September 1991 magazine carried an article called “Weathering the storm – rural report from Waipu”.
Waipu is a small Northland town situated just off SH1 between Brynderwyn and Ruakaka. The population was 1,491 in the 2006 Census, an increase of 222 from 2001 and more than double the 1991 population.
The latest figures from 2018 make Waipu’s popularity plain with 2,715 people recorded in the last Census.
But times were tight back in 1991, and our article put the survival of Finlayson Hardware down to its extremely broad offering and the staunch loyalty of the local farmers. Run by John Finlayson, the store had no less than 300 accounts.
To find out what had changed in the two decades since, in 2011 we talked to Bruce and Coralie Roberts, who’d bought Finlayson Hardware in 1998.
Finlayson Hardware didn’t fit your typical hardware store stock profile. It was a “dairy in hardware – a trading store for a small rural area”, and this was “the reality of small town retailing”.
While the Waipu store had struggled as an independent for some years, having joined Hammer Hardware in 2002-2003, turnover doubled.
Fast forward to 2011 and Waipu might have lost its bank, three of four gas stations, its solicitor and clothes store, but not its Hammer Hardware.
Bruce told us back then: “20 years on, we still occupy the same convenience spot in the hardware market that John [Finlayson] did.
“It’s not the same market as then, it has got tougher with overseas competitors trying to grab a share, but there will always be a place for the smaller local hardware store that has local knowledge and is prepared to go that little bit further for their customer.”
Back then, after 22 years in retail, Bruce and Coralie were looking to exit the still thriving business but it would take
another 10 years before Waipu Hammer Hardware found its new owners.
Indeed, it took until the end of March this year, before Bruce and Coralie would hand the store’s keys to new owners, Dean and Alana McCarthny, for whom the business is a truly family- run enterprise.
FAST FORWARD TO SEPTEMBER 2011
It’s only 10 years ago but how quickly one forgets how negative mid-2011’s consents were, down 25-30% or so on the previous year, by volume and by value.
2011 however also marked the year Kiwis really took to online shopping, with almost half of the New Zealand population set to shop online in 2011 and each shopper spending an average of almost $1,400.
MORE AT www.facebook.com/nzhardwarejournal
SEPTEMBER 2021 | NZHJ 47