Pacific snaps up Living & Giving gift chain

By SIMON HENDERY

Appliance store heavyweight Pacific Retail Group is venturing into homeware sales through the purchase of the up-market Living & Giving chain.

Pacific Retail - which runs the 90-shop stable of Noel Leeming, Bond & Bond and Computer City stores - is paying $4.4 million for Living & Giving's six gift and homeware shops in Auckland and Hamilton.

Group executive director Stefan Preston said Pacific Retail was making "a tentative step" outside its traditional arena because it saw the homeware and gift business as an "under-served" sector of New Zealand's retail market which was ripe for development.

"Pacific Retail Group has a big retail management structure and there is no reason why we can't operate divisions other than just appliances," Mr Preston said.

"[In Living & Giving] we've got what we believe is the very best platform for expansion."

Living & Giving would use Pacific Retail's head office administrative services but would retain an autonomous management structure and business development programme.

The proposed administrative tie-up is in line with similar cost-saving moves former Whitcoulls head Mr Preston has implemented across the group since joining Pacific Retail 15 months ago.

Living & Giving's six stores - five in Auckland and one in Hamilton - have a total annual turnover of $10.7 million.

Pacific Retail's annual sales exceed $360 million.

Two new Living & Giving stores - in central Auckland and Botany Downs - are due to open in the next six months but Mr Preston said Pacific Retail would not be rushing to expand further in the short term.

"We want to own it [the Living & Giving chain], get comfortable with its operation, and learn the business," Mr Preston said. "We will open more stores - that's why we bought it - but we are not going to do it tomorrow."

Living & Giving director Peter Jackson, whose wife Sally Bisley founded the chain, said the couple would work with the store's new owners for six months before possibly taking a well-earned break from business.

"We are looking forward to the dream that she [Sally Bisley] had being rolled out through the country."

The first Living & Giving store was opened in Mt Eden in 1987.

Pacific Retail has a stake in local e-tailer Flying Pig, but Mr Preston said he had not considered whether Living & Giving's product range would be sold through the internet site.

He would not be drawn on whether further acquisitions were in the pipeline for Pacific Retail

Pacific Retail's shares closed unchanged at 145c.