All not-so-good (but cheap and readily available) things

The Warehouse is NZ’s answer to Wal-Mart. Arriving here with few possessions, we spent a lot of time at the Warehouse as we set up housekeeping.

Most of the cheap crap they sell is just that, although we’ve also found plenty of things that we’re perfectly happy with. They’re open all the time, the staff are generally friendly, and the stuff is cheap.

Since we’ve been here they’ve been threatening to close down the store near us. Our new house in Birkenhead is…was… in walking distance to a Warehouse, so we thought we were safe.

But no. General retail trends, an aging building, and finally COVID-19, have conspired and our Birkenhead branch closed even before we got the chance to move.

This closure is part of a bigger move they made, closing stores around the country. The company overall made healthy profits over the past years, and so now some people are angry they’re closing stores. But what are they to do… lose money now because they made some before? It’s sad for people who now have to drive to a Warehouse (in our case about 3 miles), and of course for the people who lose their jobs. I don’t know that there is any answer that makes everybody happy.