25 may 2004

Dymocks' Flagship Store Moves To Premier Queen Street Site - and celebrates its ten-year anniversary.

After a decade in New Zealand at premises at Atrium on Elliott, another chapter is unfolding for leading booksellers Dymocks as they relocate their flagship store into a new purpose-built central Auckland site at the 246 Plaza, Queen Street.

The specially designed store, currently under construction, will be opened to the public on July 1.

Don Grover, CEO Dymocks, says the reasons for the move were simple.

"Shifting to the best known street in Auckland is a sound strategic move for us," he says.

"Our new Queen Street location has higher foot traffic as it is situated on the primary pedestrian route up and down-town, able to capture the weekday lunch crowds including students and businesspeople, as well as visitors to Auckland."

Dymocks is renowned for offering customers the widest range of new and backlist books in the country. Dymocks hosts literary functions, offers the Booklover newsletter, the Booklover loyalty card, and sponsors many key book-related events.

Dymocks 246 Queen Street will be a more spacious store, and full of new innovations.

"Our planned service expansion will satisfy the needs of even the most discerning booklover," says Mr Grover.

Occupying the entire ground floor of the 246 Plaza, the store is easy to navigate with expert booksellers on hand to answer any book related question.

"Also new to this store are point of sale internet capabilities. Our service counters are equipped with a search function so our staff will be able to answer any question a booklover may fire at them about a title's availability and so on."

To cater for the local educational market there is an extensive range of ESL language and training books, and business and professional titles to meet the needs of the CBD market.

"We have also taken on five new specialist staff to better serve the needs of our customers," he says.

"This store is all about the customer - convenience and satisfaction. The layout is fresh and has been designed around the buying habits of booklovers - whatever the genre they are seeking."

Queen Street is the true heart of Auckland, and the area is already undergoing a major refurbishment of its own, giving it even more appeal to browsing shoppers.

The 246 Plaza site was constructed in the early 1960's as one of Auckland city's first multilevel retail plazas connecting Queen Street via escalators to Lorne Street.

ENDS