KEY POINTS:
There was a story I always thought begged to be written: "The dark side of The Warehouse."
In the 1990s when the big Red Sheds were taking over provincial towns, I was convinced there must be an evil retail genius tale behind the smiley do-gooder sausage sizzles
and red polo shirt cult of Stephen Tindall's empire.
Certainly, the small strip retailers in Dargaville thought so. But the media seemed to have drunk the Kool-Aid and, for decades, was loved-up about everything Tindall - he was the token business magnate palatable to the masses.
That in itself made me suspicious. But the times I did sniff around the topic, annoyingly there never seemed to be anything to make the story stack up - no underground lair, no sinister behind-the-scenes dirty dealings, despite the chain's outrageously powerful position on the retail landscape. Granted, half the items you bought at the Warehouse had inbuilt premature obsolescence and didn't work, but the staff were obviously used to this and always jolly nice about replacing them.
As far as anyone could tell, there was no secret "How Well Do You Know Him?" side to the noble Stephen Tindall, so his mana as the country's only thoroughly decent capitalist remained intact and, for a long time, the Warehouse share price story was unremittingly upbeat.
That didn't stop me being sneery about the Chinese-made tat which had created Tindall's fortune and encouraged a mindless consumerism among middle New Zealand. My pious view was, poor people should stop buying plasma televisions and fake distressed Tuscan garden furniture they could ill afford and instead start growing vegetables and learning carpentry. But that was when I lived alone in a damp flat with nothing in the fridge but gin and Chanel No 5 and, personally, had no need for cheap toasters.
I was a snobby hypocrite.
Now I live in the suburbs and, as I write this, can spy at least a dozen lurid plastic items which are like catnip to a 3-year-old - my daughter is sitting in a Schiaparelli-pink beanbag playing with a lime green yo-yo - both lovely fire-risks procured from the Red Shed. And since I'm 'fessing up: I not only love the Warehouse but adore The $2 Shop, a retail format very similar to the Warehouse in its early incarnation, when you never knew what you'd find on the next pallet. A pair of novelty glasses with flashing lights? A kilo of drawing pins? Silver doilies, a purple feather boa, 300 felt pens - it's all good.
These days I have revised my view and think Tindall probably has done a great deal to improve the life of aspirational working class New Zealanders; not least allowing them to wrap up their kids in a chav-tastic polar fleece blanket with a picture of a Bratz on it.
But I am still a bit iffy about the devotion to Tindall himself. It always seemed bogus that he was so apologetic about capitalism at the same time as encouraging people to spend, spend, spend. And now he is poised to sell out of his company while insisting it will retain the wholesome culture he has nurtured. Pardon my scepticism, but how do you do that if you give up your dominant shareholding?
In my book, it would be more honest to accept that creative destruction is part of private enterprise. And if the Warehouse gets sold to Woolworths or a private equity player, here's betting we see a "dark side of the Warehouse" story appear sooner rather than later.