After a near three-decade tenure on that board, including serving as chairman for 18 of those years, the Dunedin businessman and entrepreneur stepped down in April.
Recently, Mr Dippie and his wife Frances, owners of Mitre 10 Mega Dunedin, Mitre 10 Mosgiel, and co-owners of Mitre 10 Mega Wānaka, were inducted into the Mitre 10 Hall of Fame, in recognition of their "enormous" contribution to the co-operative.
Inducting the couple, Mitre 10 director Conor Kershaw paid tribute to their "relentless energy, passion, sense of community and selflessness" which had, and continued to be, unwavering.
"If you ask Martin ‘what has been the most rewarding thing over his business career?’, he will tell you, hands down, it has been the privilege to help many other members of our co-op family to grow their own businesses through his ... contribution," Mr Kershaw said.
Yesterday, Mr Dippie said it was nice to receive that acknowledgement during a year which was also the 50th anniversary of Mitre 10, and to have his father at the function. He credited his parents Neville and the late Gaynor for instilling an entrepreneurial spirit into him and his brother Allan.
As schoolboys, the pair would head to the Catlins at weekends to source ponga logs from farmers who were clearing land, delivering the logs to customers at nights. Martin bought his first student flat when he was 17.
Martin and Frances bought the Dunedin and Mosgiel Mitre 10 stores in 1994. He was just a year into his own Mitre 10 business when he was elected to the board at his first annual meeting.
His tenure saw the co-operative through many significant milestones including the introduction of the Mega format, the 2008 Global Financial Crisis, the advent of e-commerce, the Christchurch earthquakes and the Covid-19 pandemic.
It had been a fun and enjoyable involvement and its financial model — being a co-operative of family-owned businesses — meant it was all about collaboration.
The business had gone from a collection of "Ma and Pa" hardware stores to a co-operative collectively employing more than 8000 people, with more than 80 stores throughout the country.
In 2001, Mr Dippie was involved in a study tour overseas, looking at what needed to be done in New Zealand. The first Mega store opened in 2004.
The success story over the past 50 years had been locally-owned businesses investing in their real estate, people and communities, he said.
During his extensive travels, Mr Dippie reckoned he had stolen "thousands" of ideas from other stores to implement back home.
Earlier this year, some of the top leaders of the global home improvement industry visited New Zealand and the Mitre 10 stores measured up "as good as anywhere in the world", Mr Dippie said.
Those leaders were particularly interested in the garden centres and cafes within the stores and how good the atmosphere was. They asked about the Mitre 10 model and how to get that "localness", which Mr Dippie described as the co-operative’s "secret sauce".
Innovation would continue and, over the next decade, he expected to see the use of robots and other technologies. Change was good and co-operatives could be more nimble than corporates when it came to change, he said.
Mitre 10 Westport managing director and co-owner Troy Scanlon won the chief executive achievement award at the Mitre 10 Awards in Hamilton on July 31.
The award recognises a leader who represents the true spirit of Mitre 10, living the co-operative’s values, supporting the local community, and running a very successful business.
The fourth generation of the Scanlon family at the helm of Martin’s Mitre 10, Mr Scanlon and his wife Casey bought the business from his parents Kevin and Lee just days into the first Covid lockdown.
