Dymocks to close its Queen St outlet

Dymocks at 246 Queen Street in Auckland, which is due to shut at the end of this month. Photo / Greg Bowker

Bookseller Dymocks is to close its Queen St outlet, its third store closure within a month.

The company-owned and operated store at 246 Queen St will shut its doors for the last time on June 27.

This follows the liquidations last month of the Dymocks franchises on Wellington's Lambton Quay and at Smales Farm on the North Shore.

The latest closure will leave the chain with seven New Zealand stores, including a newly opened franchise in Ponsonby.

Dymocks chief executive Don Grover said the company had been looking for an alternative downtown Auckland site to 246 Queen St for some time, without success.

"It has not been an ideal situation there for a number of years now and we have sustained quite substantial losses keeping the business operating."

The shopping centre it was in had become virtually a service centre surrounded by fast food outlets, rather than the mall of cafes and other retail outlets it first traded in five years ago.

He said the company was "working tirelessly" to find another more suitable Queen St location and it was hopeful of reopening, but in the meantime it could not sustain the losses it was incurring on the current store.

Dymocks closed its Auckland office in April and moved administration of its New Zealand outlets to Sydney.

Meanwhile, liquidators' reports show that the failed franchises in Lambton Quay and Smales Farm owe an estimated $1.1 million and $497,000 respectively. Both were voluntary liquidations.

The liquidators for Smales Farm said turnover at the new site, which only opened in June 2008, was "generally well below expectations".

Industry sources said the outlet located within a business park lacked a street frontage and through traffic.

Grover said "everybody's a genius in retrospect". Smales Farm was an immature site and the franchisees were new to the trade, but there were signs of the business improving.

In the case of Lambton Quay, the business needed to be restructured because of "changes in the competitive nature of Lambton Quay bookselling". The premises were too large and expensive, he said. There is both a Whitcoulls and a Borders on the shopping stretch.

Grover said a large chunk of the amounts owed by the failed franchises was owed to Dymocks.