The group, which includes The Warehouse, Noel Leeming, Warehouse Stationery and Torpedo7, is proposing to close six stores in its network resulting in up to 950 job losses and an additional 130 cuts from its head office.
In an NZX announcement this morning, the country's largest listed retail company said it was moving to an agile business model, which would "likely see a reduction of around 100-130 roles" in its Northcote head office.
In addition to this, it plans to close six The Warehouse, Noel Leeming and Warehouse Stationery stores. The stores that face closure include: Noel Leeming Henderson Clearance Centre and Tokoroa store, The Warehouse Whangaparaoa, Johnsonsville and Dunedin Central stores and the Warehouse Stationery Te Awamutu store.
This follows its earlier announcement that it will close its The Warehouse store in Birkenhead in July.
The group has commenced the consultation process as it powers on with its plans to go agile from August 31.
Group chief executive Nick Grayston said the impact from Covid-19 over the past couple of months had "made it even more clear that Agile is the right model for the group".
"We are confident that agile principles will support the business by improving speed to market, collaboration, innovation and productivity, enabling us further to increase our focus on serving New Zealanders' needs in this uncertain environment," Grayston said in the market announcement.
"Based on our insights into changing shopping habits and the anticipated economic impacts caused by COVID-19, we are accelerating some changes that had already been planned.
"Value for money has never been more important to our customers and in order to continue to deliver this, we need to manage our costs and run our business more efficiently."
The Warehouse said its stores have experience strong trading since the country moved to alert level 2, but it said this was "a consequence of pent up demand" and it was not expected to continue as the economic impacts of the pandemic are realised.
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Hello new K-Mart!
Yes, shop at Kmart, and Make Australia Great Again!
Exactly what i was coming here to say! Perfect CBD location for them if they want out of the Meridian.
Time will tell...
Costco cannot come soon enough
A nice thought but but not a chance - the anti-business council wouldn’t allow it.
The job loses are not due to Covid 19.
The job loses are due to the Government imposed lock down.
There is a distinct difference.
Totally agree.....Let's save some lives but wreck the economy.
I take from your comment you would have happily given your life to "save" the economy? Or your mother's? How about a sibling or spouse?
Nonsense. Warehouse received many millions in wage subsidies and wants 18 mill more. You can't pin every rap on the Government. You would have preferred no Lockdown, viral open slather?
Typically, Warehouse has treated workers shabbily. In the North, staff learnt of closures from social media or phone calls.
The privater sector is getting whacked, left, right and centre. Once September rolls around and the Job Seeker subsidy runs out (so not to affect the election), the real effects will be evident. It will not be pretty.
Wait...you mean the government is lying? Say it ain't so! The worst is yet to come! Look at the empty buildings all over Dunedin, continued closures of big business and everybody blindly focusing on a tourism as the thing that's going to save us. Not going to happen. Dunedin will have 20% unemployment by Christmas. Nobody in government wants to admit it. It's easier to feed us little balls of poo over a longer period to soften the blow. Get ready...start adding up the number of jobs lost and subtract the number of jobs created, simple math. Huge deficit and Dunedin has nothing to fall back on except...Dunedin, a good plan D. Insanity!