Our New Home
13 Dec, 2021
Welcome to Parkway Drive
After eight years in Apollo Drive on Auckland’s North Shore, we’ve moved our store, warehouse and office to our brand new site in Parkway Drive, Rosedale.
We sat down with our General Manager and business owner Bill Wallace to chat about the new location and the challenges of moving a business during lockdown.
Q: What prompted the move to your new location?
A: During recent years, our online business has been steadily growing, then when the Covid 19 lockdown hit in March 2020, online sales ramped up even more as our customers were no longer able to shop in our stores. With everyone spending more time at home, our customers wanted to make their homes a comfortable haven from the outside world. So, with more stock on the way and sales continuing to increase, we could no longer fit into our Apollo Drive premises.
Q: Looking back, where did it all start for Wallace Cotton?
A: In 2005, in a small unit in Enterprise Street, Birkenhead. Rapid growth in the early years meant we soon needed more warehouse and retail space. Over the next seven years, we expanded with new stores in Newmarket, Takapuna, Ponsonby and Wellington. By 2013 our Birkenhead site was becoming too small so we re-located to Apollo Drive in the busy North Harbour area. Our new home gave us better warehousing and office space plus a new, larger retail store. For the next eight years we continued to grow with new stores in Cambridge, Northwest Shopping Centre and Merivale, Christchurch. Then in 2017, we took the plunge and went global opening online in the UK, followed by a Wallace Cotton store in Battersea, London.
Q: Was it hard to find a site that met your specific needs?
A: It proved to be a very difficult set of criteria to achieve! We looked at a building on the corner of Constellation and Parkway Drive in Rosedale, but after discussions with the landlord, Midpoint Investments, we agreed to demolish the existing building and start from scratch.
Aspec Construction began our build in January 2021, and the site was handed over to us – on schedule on the 1st of September, during lockdown. Moving the business and organising stock during level 3 lockdown certainly had its challenges! Our team were amazing and we managed to complete the move in just over a week, with warehouse operations only suspended for two days. The warehouse space in our new home is twice the size of the Apollo Drive warehouse.
Q: What elements of the build are you particularly pleased with?
A: Our flagship store is a beautiful experience for our customers and our warehouse space is performing well. The attention to detail in the office area is a key feature, enhanced with all-new furniture and furnishings. We’re in the process of constructing a large studio designed to resemble a house setting, which will be used for much of our web and catalogue photography.
We’ve come a long way from Enterprise St and we are delighted with our new home. Our team have been incredible during the transition and we look forward to celebrating this milestone in our journey with them all soon.