KEY POINTS:
The gigantic home-improvement havens are places where families can go for an outing, where blokes can aimlessly graze the aisles and where amateur builders can indulge their wildest DIY fantasies.
Such is the passion for the modern hardware store that couples have even been married in these places.
But behind the charity sausage sizzles and face painting for kids, Mitre 10 Mega and Bunnings are going hammer and tongs in a bid to boost their chunk of retail spending which threatens to contract throughout the year.
There's a lot at stake in the country's 30 big-box stores - equating to about 30ha of floor space and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment.
The hard-ball attitude has resulted in the battle over price comparison advertising ending up in the Court of Appeal. And there is constant niggle due to price checkers' activities in each other's stores.
Bunnings' Melbourne head office puts on a stern game face when talking about the competition. Managing director John Gillam's message is: "We don't really see it as a head-to-head with Mega - there's a large number of participants in the home-improvement sector and we don't focus on one."
Mitre 10's Glenfield head office is faceless. When repeatedly asked for its views on the opposition and plans for the future, a spokeswoman said managers of the franchise did not wish to comment, although store owners are forthcoming.
Bunnings moved into the New Zealand market in 2001, has 14 warehouse stores and wants to add two or three a year. The first of 15 Megas was opened in Hastings in 2004 and Mitre 10 says it is aiming for 20.
One to open in Albany towards the end of this year will have a mezzanine floor and an escalator to take shoppers on the journey - a New Zealand first in the home-improvement sector.
And if it feels like the big barns are taking over your neck of the woods, spare a thought for Ashburton. The town of 25,443 has a Bunnings Warehouse and a Mega. The big-format stores have prospered as they have extended their range beyond just hardware. Wander the aisles and you'll find beer fridges, kids' wheelbarrows, chocolate fountains and popcorn makers. Near the inevitable garden centre there are cafes and playgrounds. These are places for families.
At most times there's plenty of parking, they're generally close to roads and are a true shopping destination in the same mould as The Warehouse megastores before them.
So what's the future; is New Zealand getting too much of a big thing?
Retail consultants RCG sees clouds on the horizon. Executive chairman Paul Keane says he expects growth to slow in the next five to 10 years.
"Sales will continue to rise but I don't think the number of new stores being deployed [will]."
Lack of suitable sites was part of the problem but somewhere there had to be a saturation point no matter how many more of the 45 remaining independent "ma and pa" hardware shops were knocked out.
While essential DIY will have to be done, it's the spending on extras that will suffer.
"Most of the signs are that consumer spending is softening a bit - it's the discretionary kind of stuff you'd expect to get hit," Keane says.
And there's some irony in who could feel it even more than Bunnings and Mega. The Warehouse which steamrolled all before it, particularly in regional centres, is already feeling the pinch from the home improvement barns with their huge range of barbecues, outdoor furniture and kids' paddling pools.
Forsyth Barr analyst Guy Hallwright says higher mortgage interest rates and petrol prices will inevitably cut into spending on home improvement and agrees Bunnings and Mega might have eaten into some of The Warehouse's sales.
"The Warehouse generally has given over so much floor space to clothing and electronics that their range in other areas has been reduced so I imagine there has been some flow on."
David Edwards, chief executive of Fletcher Distribution, which runs tradespeople and "serious DIY-focused" Placemakers, has a unique perspective on the battle between Bunnings and Mega.
"We're seeing changes on a number of fronts. We're seeing Bunnings and Mitre 10 strategising for a growth into the trade business.
"The sheer size of their operations means they have voracious appetites and they demand volume. Whilst it's a very healthy DIY and retail-orientated hardware market for them to be as successful as they want to be, they're going to have to grow the trade.
"My view is that Mitre 10 Mega has got the upper ground, which is the reverse of Australia, so therefore there is going to be a real fight for the retail customer. That sort of fight has positives for the customer because it becomes a price war, but from my perspective I don't enjoy the fight for the dollar that Bunnings and Mega are engaging in.
"Strategies relying purely on price don't necessarily result in fair prices that enable businesses to reinvest.
"The margin cuts generally mean there are cuts elsewhere - I don't think that's in the interests of the customers generally in the industry but that's the way it works."
Placemakers has the most extensive network and with revenue of $1.2 billion has the biggest turnover, although it has eschewed the hyperstore format.
Placemakers stores - majority-owned by Fletchers in partnership with local store owners - were detecting a slowdown.
"Certainly we are seeing a tightening of the market. We should get a good indication in March as to whether things have genuinely turned or things are continuing," said Edwards.
While supplying tradesmen would be hit by falling building consents and more stringent building regulation, there was still a pipeline of work. "We're of the opinion that trade will stay stronger for longer than genuine retail."
That's where one of the country's biggest Mega franchise owners is looking. Vinod Kumar put on his first barbecue for tradespeople before Christmas, and wants to expand his Henderson timber yard to cater for small- to medium-size builders.
Kumar is now making roof trusses which he will supply to other Mitre 10s.
"We need to get into trade to be sustainable."
He owns Megas in Henderson and Botany and is building another in Albany. He also owns a smaller home and trade store in Westgate and by the end of the year will employ 500 people.
His Botany store is being expanded to 17,000 sq m and he says if he had his chance again he'd double the size of it to give space to lighting, flooring and the fast-growing flat-pack furniture trade.
Like his rivals, he says he's focused on his own backyard. "I've never been into a Placemakers store, I can't remember going into a Carters store but I've been in one or two Bunnings."
What does he think of the Aussies?
"I've got nothing against them. At the end of the day it's about the range and the service."
Bunnings price checkers are active in his stores, he says.
"It's intense rivalry. They're in the shops all the time looking at prices at pick on particular products. I have not done that.
"They will look at something and keep on dropping [prices] - we could too but there's no winners."
Andrew Smith, owner of Hornby Mega in Christchurch, is monitoring prices very actively.
"We do treat it very seriously - not necessarily daily but were constantly monitoring all competitor activity, not just Bunnings."
Kumar's first Henderson store employed six people in 1989, his Mega has more than 120 workers.
He concedes a stricter inventory control would pare back his range from the existing 60,000 lines to around 40,000 but he can't resist new products.
Eighty per cent are core lines, 20 per cent are new, non-hardware items which carry an element of experimentation that could appeal to families, such as popcorn makers and novelty lights.
The store plays the Kiwi card - customers are reminded on the inhouse sound system Mega shops are "Proudly New Zealand-owned and operated".
That nationalistic play is something Bunnings is acutely aware of.
Bunnings is owned by Wesfarmers, an Australian conglomerate now that country's largest retailer with Coles, KMart and Target chains and revenues of A$44 billion. Other interests include fuel and liquor outlets, office supplies, coalmining, gas processing and distribution, electricity generation, insurance, chemicals and fertilisers, and industrial and safety product distribution, including NZ Safety.
Bunnings boss Gillam says the company identifies with living some distance away from the main action.
Wesfarmers traces its origins to Western Australia, far away from the corporate powerhouses of Sydney and Melbourne.
Bunnings entered New Zealand in 2001 through Benchmark and Hardware House.
"We'd been eyeing the market for some time - we felt we needed a business of some substance rather than starting from scratch."
The company has spent $125 million and built up a staff of 2200 workers, some of whom were involved in sporadic industrial action before Christmas.
Basic wage rates are on a par with the rest of the retail sector - minimum wage levels with low union membership - but before Bunnings opened its Mt Roskill flagship store last year it initially had more than 1200 applicants.
Students are attracted to the job at one end while at the other are former policemen, accountants and even rock musicians looking for something different during what may be a "gap year".
Gillam says Bunnings stores conform to a reasonably standard formula throughout Australasia, although local buyers do have some sway.
"The challenge all retailers have is to have consistency - customers need to trust you as an old friend but part of what they love you for is when you bring them new stuff."
The size of the big-box stores gives them huge buying power - something hardware supplier AHM knows about.
General manager Wayne van Diepen told the industry-leading Hardware Journal last June that suppliers could be the "chosen one" in some categories in some stores but not in others.
"Individual big boxes can create the same amount of turnover as a whole group used to. I think the big boxes have definitely given us some big opportunities if you're in. I think if you're not in the big boxes you must have a very hard time making ends meet in New Zealand," he told the Journal.
Gillam simply says "you've got to buy and buy hard" and the product ranging philosophy - entry, good, better, best - means all suppliers get a look in but the emphasis is on the customers.
"If you're just putting a couple of things in a wall and you might not use that drill again, then $14-$15 is great value but if you're doing a lot of work in the backyard you might be driven to buy a very good tool."
Bunnings started the 15 per cent off price guarantee (if a non-sale item is found to be cheaper in the area) and Gillam does mention the opposition in this context.
"We're flattered by them copying us - that's the only comment we'd have to say about them."
Unlike Kumar's west Auckland Mega, Bunnings sees DIY growing faster than trade. A slowing housing market is not all bad as homeowners feather their nests to a certain degree but nothing matches a period of rapid price growth and new house building.
"That's good fun all round. Sometimes you need to be able to sail into the wind."
