Shopping and sport can mix

Friday, 29 November 2019

Shruti Bharucha, left, and Manpreet Kaur, at the Kmart store in Invercargill on Friday, say they also shop at The Warehouse.

Many men would call it a perfect scenario - watch Sky Sport while the wife goes shopping.

That's what the owner of a barber shop in the Kmart building in Invercargill hopes for anyway.

Kmart opened on November 22 but MMBarber Express is still the only other shop in the building to be open for business.

MMBarber Express owner Liza Dermody said she was approached by the developers of the Kmart building to open her shop just metres from the Kmart entrance and jumped at the chance.

'It's a good spot for the men to get a haircut while the ladies go shopping, most men would try to get out of that, watch Sky Sport and read a magazine and hang out.'

The remaining six shops, mostly food, are expected to open in the next 10 days.

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Paul Smith, director of Windermere Holdings which developed the Kmart building, said consenting delays had held up the opening of the remaining stores but he hoped they would all be open within 10 days.

Tradesmen were busy fitting out some of the shops in the building on Friday.

Invercargill City Council chief executive Clare Hadley said seven of the eight building consents for the tenancies in Kmart were issued within the 20-working-day statutory time frame.

Hadley previously said the Kmart building developer chose to make the tenants of the eight other retail outlets in the building responsible for their own consents.

'That means there's a variation of time frames because some applied much later than others.'

When Kmart opened at 8am on November 22 about 600 customers were at the doors waiting to get in, a spokeswoman said.

'In terms of attendance it was the biggest store opening we have seen in New Zealand this year.'

The company declined to release any information around sales revenue in the opening days, but said they were humbled by the excitement and support of the Invercargill community.

Shopper Anne Fryer said she had moved to Invercargill from Auckland and had missed going to Kmart until the Invercargill store opened.

The attraction for her was the 'reasonable prices' and lots of choices, but she believed the stock was getting a bit low on Friday.

Another shopper, Manpreet Kaur, said she shopped at both Kmart and The Warehouse.

'Some things you pick up from here and some there.'