The new PlaceMakers Carisbrook store sits on hallowed ground.
PlaceMakers Dunedin joint venture operator Justin Macready at the new Carisbrook store.
The Drive Thru team loving their new bigger purpose-built building supplied drive thru. (L-R) Scott Mark, Troy Simonsen, Leevi Newman, Gavin Sullivan, and Ian Johnston.
The Yard Team in their new purpose built timber and landscaping yard, with the biggest range of timber available in Dunedin. (L-R) Peter Street, Logan McAliece, Aidan MacRae, Tom Shea.
The Trade Hall Team, enjoying the newer, brighter store. (L-R) Cathy Mair, Asela Moata’ane, Chris Field, Courtney Head, Rachel Dooling.
Our customers are loving our new heating, bathroom, and kitchen showroom. (L-R) Corrin Wilson, Jane Smith, Ruby Dooling.
My family and I moved to Dunedin from Christchurch in 2009.
It was definitely meant to be, as my Great Grandfather Robert Macready arrived in Dunedin in the late 1800s on a ship from Scotland. I’m sure he’d be proud the Macreadys came back to where it started.
It was such a great opportunity to own and run your own local business in such a great community. My kids were two and five when we moved here. You couldn’t ask for a better place to raise a family, and my kids are real Otago kids and have been so lucky with schools and sport over the years.
My wife Gwen has certainly put her event management skills to good use in the community in our time here, being involved with the Arts Festival, Cancer Society Daffodil Day, iD Fashion Week, St Clair School, St Clair SLS, just to name a few.
It’s also been great getting involved in the local community myself, as Junior Chairperson at Southern Rugby Club and more recently John McGlashan College.
I’m proud of our achievements in business since we’ve been here, especially with lots of changes and improvements over the years, always with our customers needs and wants in mind. These include our Mosgiel Trade store, our much larger state-of-the-art Frame and Truss Plant (the biggest south of Christchurch), and our commercial offer.
Moving to a bigger, better premises was the last big goal on my list. We started to look at options for a new site or to upgrade our current site many years ago. Since 2009, we have more than doubled our sales and become more and more trade focused and capable, to where it’s now over 95% of our business. Our current site was purpose built for PlaceMakers in 1997, but we’ve grown and changed so much since then. We did try and re-design the current site, but decided that moving would allow us to build a dedicated store with no compromises, and it meant that we have no disruption for our customers, which was very important.
Design
We’ve designed our Carisbrook store for our customers.
This is a very different approach, and it is the first new store design to have a dedicated ‘Click and Collect’ zone, which will be completed before Christmas. Feedback from our customers is they want us to be more efficient, and our mix of pre-ordered goods for delivery or collection has been growing steadily.
Two Covid lockdowns and our digital platform being fast tracked has really expedited a new way of doing business. When we came out of both lockdowns to a massive amount of demand, our customers started to place a much larger amount of pre-orders for collection.
This has rapidly evolved and feedback from our customers, and even customers who only occasionally use us, is that we were far better than anyone else in our market.
The timing was perfect as we still had flexibility in our store design to allow for this. I’m sure we’ll have some wee tweaks to make which we will do based on customer feedback, but I really believe we have ‘‘nailed it”.
New Store
We fundamentally have four types of customers. Customers who have larger orders that they organise to be collected or delivered on a specific day or time in line with their build program. They can’t afford to have their qualified builders wasting their time, driving around picking things up and collecting orders; that’s our job, and efficiency is key. Every minute their staff are in PlaceMakers is a minute they can’t charge!
Secondly, we have additions and alteration builders. Their job requirements are often not known until the day of the job, replacing weatherboards, re-lining a bathroom. Again they need to check the job, make a list, and come and grab their gear. Our new site allows for this to be much more efficient with better ‘bundling’ of products into job lots. Again these customers want to get in, get the product loaded, and then get back on site, and we’re well set up for that.
Our third customer type are our subtrades: landscapers, blocklayers, gib fixers and stoppers, roofers, and even plumbers and electricians when they need specific tools and materials. Again with our new landscaping yard with ‘bulk’ aggregates (due to be completed in December) and new drywall aisle, we’ll go from the same as everyone else to best in class.
Lastly, our new showroom has been split into two. One side is designed for our ‘Customers, Customers’, with a very high end showroom feel, with the latest plumbing, bathroom, kitchen, wardrobe, and heating range on display in a warm comfortable environment.
It features working displays, including a shower display where you’ll be able to test out the latest shower technology to see which shower head suits your lifestyle. Our customers have told us with decisions on these products, that it’s much easier if they send their customers in to view the products, talk to our team of experts, and make their selections.
The other half of our store is very trade dedicated, with a toolshop, fastenings zone, safety store, hardware range, and a trade-focused paint, adhesive, and sealants area. Whilst we’re predominantly a trade store, this also makes us very attractive to serious DIY customers. We’re still open all day on Saturday from 8am-4pm which allows our tradies to grab what they need on the weekend, but also allows our loyal serious DIYers to grab their needs as well.
We’re so excited to have been able to move to our new store, and the years of planning have paid off.
The added bonus is that the new store being on the hallowed ground of Carisbrook makes it even more special. We’ve had so much Carisbrook memorabilia donated to us, and we are showcasing as much as we can: we’ve got signed jerseys, signs, signed hats, and lots of rugby programs, and even some gravel from the old embankment. I even found an old newspaper article from 1956 with a photo of my father playing for Waitaki Boys against Kings as a curtain-raiser to the All Blacks vs South Africa test match. My siblings and I didn’t even know he’d done that!
My team has worked so hard for this store, and I’m so proud of what our team has achieved. Despite all the delays that we’ve had due to Covid and building supply hold ups, it was all worthwhile, and our customer’s feedback is that they love it!
We still have some things to complete, but it’s 95% there. We’ve got such a great team, the best ever with a great mix of exciting youth and experience. Our team has well over 300 years of building industry knowledge, with specialists in all areas from estimators to kitchen designers, and frame and truss detailers to tool specialists.
We’ve built a new store for the future, and we’re well set for Dunedin’s exciting growth and development over the next few years!
