Are popular MITRE 10 HOME & TRADE owner/managers Darryl and June Tilly victims of their own success?
The couple have built Mitre 10's market share in Whangarei to the point where the nationwide co-operative saw a MEGA store as a viable proposition and the next logical step.
The journey from modest to the threshold of a MEGA has seen them consistently taking top or runner-up place in the national awards.
Darryl Tilly has also served on the Mitre 10 New Zealand board of directors for several years and is still a director.
Now, a $20 million Whangarei Mitre 10 MEGA store, Northland's first, will open in a few weeks without the Tillys at the helm. The store replaces the Tillys' Mitre 10 Home & Trade store at the Regent.
This year Mitre 10 national management said the couple would be the owner/managers of the new store but Mr Tilly recently confirmed that plans had changed, referring the Advocate to Mitre 10 marketing manager Dave Elliott for comment.
Mr Elliott said MEGA stores were "pretty big machines" which required enormous amounts of capital to set up, usually $5 million to $7 million for stock alone.
"Ownership is a matter of resources and the stage that you are at in life, making those decisions on resources," he said.
He said the company was looking forward to continued connection with Mr Tilly, who would be retained as an adviser while the new store was getting up and running. A general manager had been appointed who would be hiring up to 30 new staff next month when job descriptions had been finalised, making a total of about 65 with the staff from the Tillys' store.
The MEGA would initially be run as a corporate store.
The Whangarei MEGA is on the former McBreen Jenkins/Transfield site on the corner of Porowini Ave and Kaka St.
The $20 million price tag relates to land purchase, construction of an 8000sq m building, set-up costs and stock.
Mitre 10 identified the Porowini Ave site as an ideal location several years ago, about the time that the Whangarei District Council signalled its intention to extend the road.
The extension, completed last July, changed Porowini Ave from a dead-end to an arterial route linking Tarewa Rd and Okara Drive, exiting near the new stadium and the second harbour crossing.
The company had planned to complete the project to coincide with the opening of the road extension but the project was delayed by land-purchase issues.
The original plan was to be a lessee on the site but in the end the company bought it.
The general manager of the new store is Dave Glover, who came to New Zealand with his wife and son from South Africa four years ago. He previously worked for South Africa's biggest non-food retail merchandise company and as store manager for The Warehouse in Gisborne.
Darryl and June Tilly already owned Mitre 10 in Dargaville when they established MITRE 10 Home & Trade in in Lower Cameron St, Whangarei, in 2000.
The business rapidly outgrew the site and the Tillys relocated to new premises three times larger at the Regent, just outside the CBD, in 2004.
The business includes a cafe and garden centre, and employs about 50 full and part-time workers. This business will close when the MEGA store opens.