BUNNINGS WAREHOUSE

'Bunnings Warehouse' is the southern hemisphere's largest hardware chain store, with more than 249 stores all over Australia and New Zealand.
Bunnings employs over 24,000 people and its revenue in the 2005 to 2006 financial year was approximately A$4.28 billion.
The chain is owned by Wesfarmers Limited, one of Western Australia's largest companies. Wesfarmers bought out Bunnings Limited in 1994. Wesfarmers also owns WA Salvage discount stores and HouseWorks in Western Australia, and in July 2007 announced it is purchasing Coles Group, with an intended completion date of October 2007.

Contents

History

Bunnings Warehouse

References

External links

History

In 1886 brothers Arthur and Robert Bunning left London to settle in Perth, Western Australia, and soon got a government building contract, which led to them founding a group of building companies which later became 'Bunning Bros Pty Ltd'. They purchased their first sawmill the following year, and over the next few years they concentrated more on saw milling and timber distribution and less on building. The company expanded to include several new mills around Western Australia, and in 1952 Bunnings Limited became a Public company and expanded into retailing. In 1970 Bunnings bought the merchandising and saw milling operations of the Hawker Siddeley Group, in 1983 they bought out Millars (WA) Pty Ltd and in 1990 they bought out the Alco Handyman hardware operations. The Victorian and South Australian hardware stores McEwans, owned by James McEwans Ltd, were bought out by Bunnings in 1993. Many of the McEwans stores were closed shortly after, leaving only the best performers. Bunnings Limited was then bought out by Wesfarmers Limited in 1994.
Between 1997 and 2000, Bunnings was the focal point for protest actions by The Wilderness Society^[1][2], in regard to their practise of clearing old growth forests^[3].

Bunnings Warehouse

On August 24 1994 the first Bunnings Warehouse was opened in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine, by Victorian Premier Jeff Kennett and Joe Boros, the Managing Director of Bunnings Building Supplies Pty Ltd, and was soon followed by openings of stores in Mentone, Nunawading and Altona, all suburbs of Melbourne. New Bunnings Warehouses have opened on average every three months since, many in Victoria and Western Australia, and a few in New South Wales, South Australia, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and Queensland. Getting large enough blocks of land in Sydney and Brisbane was difficult and it slowed progress into those key areas.
In 1997 the remaining McEwans stores were re-named 'Bunnings', which meant that there were two kinds of stores, Bunnings stores (smaller stores selling the basics for hardware needs only) and Bunnings Warehouses (large stores with a huge range of hardware items, and often garden supplies including plants). Gradually the smaller Bunnings stores have been closed to make way for large Bunnings Warehouses.
The Howard Smith Group, owner of Bunnings' major competition BBC Hardware and Hardwarehouse, was bought by Wesfarmers in August 2001, which gave Bunnings several dozen stores all around Australia, many of them large Hardwarehouse stores in sought-after Sydney and Brisbane, plus stores in New Zealand.
Hardwarehouse was dominant in New South Wales and Queensland but Bunnings was the major hardware retailer in Victoria, which only had seven Hardwarehouses compared to Bunnings' twenty at the time of the buy-out.
The Hardwarehouse and BBC Hardware stores kept their name for a year, and the television advertisements had the names Bunnings Warehouse, Hardwarehouse and BBC Hardware next to each other. During this time the slowest stores were closed and in 2002 the remaining Hardwarehouses began to be re-named Bunnings Warehouse. At first it was done by removing the Hardwarehouse letters and strapping a green Bunnings Warehouse sign to the building on an angle. Later the signs were straightened, and gradually the white Hardwarehouses began to be painted green and were properly signed.

That meant that there were five kinds of Bunnings stores, a Bunnings Warehouse (a large store made specifically to be a Bunnings Warehouse), an ex-Hardwarehouse store (a large store which is re-painted to be a Bunnings Warehouse, though it still has many of the original Hardwarehouse fittings), an ex-Alco Handyman store (a small store, some with the original Alco fittings), an ex-McEwans store (a small store, many of which still have original McEwans fittings) and an ex-BBC Hardware store (a small store with the original BBC Hardware fittings).
Acquisition remains a focus for Bunnings in line with this focus it purchased a Mitre 10 store in Griffith, New South Wales and Belconnen, Australian Capital Territory in 2004 and another Mitre 10 in Wodonga, Victoria in 2006. In July 2006 a Magnet Mart store in Griffith was acquired. All of these stores have been rebranded as Bunnings stores and integrated into the existing store network.
Each store is graded by size and all stores are meant to contain 'C' (core) grade products. Most of the ex-BBC Hardware and ex-McEwans stores are 'C' graded. Almost all the original Warehouses, stores in the country areas and many other Warehouses are also 'C' graded. Since their opening the stores have been getting bigger, and there are also 'S' (small) stores, 'M' (medium) stores and 'L' (large) stores, each containing a slightly larger range. The size of the store depends on the population of the area and the amount of space available. There have been many openings of increasingly larger stores and the stores that were regarded as big by customers in 1995 are now half the size of some of the new 'L' grade stores.
The largest Bunnings Warehouse store is in Vermont South, Victoria, which opened on 16 August 2005.

References

1. Fight To Rescue Victoria's Forests To Be Fought On All Fronts
2. (via Internet Archive)
3. Arrogant Ploy Proves Bunnings is Number 1 Forest Vandal (via Internet Archive)

External links

★ Bunnings Warehouse home page

★ Wesfarmers home page