Acquisitions - Sylvia Park

General information

Acquisitions is a leading retailer of desireable and exciting homewares and gift items with stores New Zealand wide.

• HUMBLE BEGINNINGS •
Acquisitions began life in the late 1970s as a tiny, shop within the Dunedin Environment Centre. Two of the current company directors who had been involved with an environmental campaign being run from the Environment Centre had formed a trust to run the shop. The small shop was staffed with volunteers and sold trade aid goods and local craft items. Turn over was around $13,000 in it's first year.

• GROWING UP •
When the volunteer workforce dried up the trust directors had to make a decision whether to 'fold up their tent' and finish up or inject some finance and become a commercial enterprise. They decided on the later and proceeded to max out their credit cards and bought out the other trust members. By then they had moved into a larger space in George Street, Dunedin and had to spread out what meagre stock holdings they could afford to fill the space and make it look interesting.

• RE-BRANDING •
In 1986 'Third World Crafts' as it was known was ready for a change in direction. A new name was settled on and stock lines were adapted and levels increased until eventually 'Acquisitions' was the largest gift store in Dunedin.

• NEW PREMISES •
1998 saw the popular store ready for a new lease of life in premises closer to the Meridian Mall, which had by then become the heart of Dunedin's central shopping precinct. A site was found in newly renovated premises at 286 George Street, which also had space upstairs for Acquisitions' head office. A new store layout and design was introduced featuring bold colours and interesting visual merchandising. 286 George Street was really the first crack at the modern contemporary stores that exist today.

• EXPANSION •
After the successful re-invention of the Acquisitions brand in Dunedin the decision was made to introduce Christchurch to Acquisitions in the year 2000. A space was secured in the Westfield Mall in Riccarton. The first Christchurch store opened a few months prior to Christmas that year.

• RAPID GROWTH •
The 2000's were a time of rapid growth for the company with four more Acquisitions stores opening in Christchurch (City Mall 2001, Eastgate & Northlands 2003, Palms 2004), one store in Wellington (Queensgate 2005) and three stores in Auckland (St. Lukes 2006, Sylvia Park & Albany 2007). Late 2009 saw Timaru introduced to Acquisitions and they formally opened their doors in the Port City on the 26th of November.

• EARTHQUAKES •
In 2010 all of Acquisitions' Christchurch stores survived the September earthquake however following the Boxing Day aftershock the City Mall branch was closed indefinitely before being completely destroyed by the mammoth aftershock on February 22nd 2011. February 22nd also saw the Palms and Eastgate stores closed indefinitely due to the malls they were housed in sustaining huge amounts of structural damage. After a couple of false starts hampered by further quakes the Eastgate store re-opened in late July 2011, sporting a new paint-job and new fittings with The Palms store re-opening later in the year after extensive structural repairs were carried out on the shopping centre.

• UNPLANNED CLOSURE •
In July 2011 Acquisitions' St. Lukes store in Auckland closed it's doors for good after it's lease wasn't renewed due to a *reconfiguration of tenancies (*PC for 'they kicked us out in favour of a bank') by their mall management. Fittings and stock from St. Lukes were transferred to Hamilton and used to open a new provincial Acquisitions store at The Base retail complex in early August 2011.

• TASMAN AREA •
Hot on the heels of the Hamilton branch Acquisitions opened it's Richmond Mall store in late August 2011 to service the greater Nelson area.

• ECOMMERCE •
In October 2011, following a disasterous attempt with an overseas company to launch a new e-commerce website for Acquisitions, www.acquisitions.co.nz was relaunched with the help of Dunedin based web and marketing company Firebrand. The all-new site included a blog, video and photo modules and, for the first time, online shopping.

• MORE STORES •
Late 2011 welcomed two more new stores to the Acquisitions fold. The first of these being the New Plymouth Store that opened it's doors at Centre City Shopping Centre on October 21st to the waiting Taranaki public. The second was our North City (Wellington) store that opened for business on November 4th.

• NEW HEAD OFFICE •
By October 2012 Acquisitions' Head Office had outgrown it's Dunedin premises above the old store in George Street and a new, larger premise was secured in Tennyson Street, Dunedin. The views were better too, which somewhat made up for the 80's decor.

• LYNNMALL •
October 2012 also saw Acquisitions welcome a new store into the family at LynnMall in New Lynn, Auckland. LynnMall became the 16th store to have been opened although City Mall and St. Lukes earlier closures meant the current number of trading stores was then 14.

• LAMBTON QUAY •
December 2012 rolled around and Acquisitions' 15th store opened it's doors to the public at Lambton Square in Lambton Quay, Wellington bringing the total number of stores in the Wellington area to three.

• RESPONSIVE WEBSITE •
In July of 2013 Acquisitions launched an upgraded version of their website. This time it was responsive and it was designed to meet the needs of a tech-savvy public that wanted to browse and buy on smartphones and tablets as well as computers. The responsive site meant that the user interface looked good and, more importantly, was easy to use no matter what device it was being viewed on.

• SECOND HAMILTON STORE •
Rolling ever onward the Acquisitions 'machine' opened another store on the 17th of October 2013 at Centre Place Shopping Centre in Hamilton. This doubled the number of Acquisitions stores in Hamilton bringing the total to two. Centre Place was a new shopping centre in central Hamilton, which celebrated it's Grand Opening that day also.

• THE HAWKES BAY •
The 22nd of November saw the second new Acquisitions store of 2013 open it's doors at 69 Emerson Street in the heart of Napier and an eager Hawkes Bay public approved.

• THE PALMS CLOSES •
On the 20th of September 2014, and after 10 years of trading, the Acquisitions store at The Palms Shopping Centre in Shirley, Christchurch was forced to close its doors due to declining sales and unprofitability due, in part, to the devastating quakes, which Christchurch had suffered. The store hung in there as long as it could and at one point felt that trading had improved enough to stay, however, declining numbers in patronage at the mall ultimately sealed the closing deal.

• PALMY OPENS •
The remaining stock and plant, as well as the manager, from The Palms store went to Palmerston North and a brand new Acquisitions store was opened at 92 The Square on the 4th of October 2014.