Thursday, July 03, 2008


POPPIES - THE LITTLE CHAIN THAT GREW !!

When the late Judy Barnes opened Poppies back in (my memory suggests) 1988 she would never have imagined that one day there would be thirteen stores with the same name, with more to come.

Judy Barnes was an elegant and interesting woman, a former ballerina, who had exquisite taste particularly in design and décor matters so when she opened that first store in what initially was an unbelievably small space it was totally different to any other New Zealand bookshop I had ever been in. Classy design and décor features including, Persian rugs on the floor, antique furniture for the fixtures with richly coloured heavy fabrics draped about the place and a range of stock that reflected her own interests in the arts- ballet, opera, classical music, modern dance, interior design, floral decoration, fashion, travel to exotic places, literary fiction, Victorian children’s books, and greetings cards that were unique to her shop are all things I remember.

It is wonderful to observe that the business remains the same Remuera icon today. It is under new ownership of course and has just been expanded into the next door shop. The husband and wife team owners are about to open a new Poppies in another upmarket Auckland suburb, Epsom.

Other Poppies locations are at Cambridge, Havelock North, Feilding, Gisborne, Hamilton, Wanganui, Nelson, Petone, Queenwood (Hamilton), New Plymouth and Tauranga. Epsom,Auckland will open later this month and a new franchisee has just signed up for the first Christchurch Poppies.
The astonishing thing about this growth is that it has all taken place over the past two to three years.

Although Poppies has clearly grown to be a significant chain of stores they have cleverly managed to ensure that each shop reflects the individual owner’s personality and interests. I suspect that they key to this crucial individuality, (so hard to achieve in chain situations), is that they each do their own ordering, hand picking quality titles and specializing in literary fiction, special non-fiction, coffee table titles, children’s and gift books with selected titles being bought on a group basis.

Poppies, lead by its franchisors Jan Wright and Breton Dobbs, would seem to have cornered a niche for itself in the quality, boutique end of the market. There is even a group of dedicated Poppies admirers who travel around the country visiting the various stores in the group.

For more on Poppies you can check out their impressive website here which includes pics of the individual shops.

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