Situated in one of Wellington’s most popular coastal suburbs, Palmers Plimmerton is for sale after 23 years of development by the current owner.
This retail enterprise combines one of New Zealand's best garden centres with a leisure and lifestyle offering including a unique range of outdoor furniture, a high-profile BBQ brand range and an agency for New Zealand-made Trueform Spas.
The store is a favourite Wellington and Lower North Island retail destination offering more than 8000sq m of inspirational garden and lifestyle shopping.
Producing strong profits, the business turns over north of $7 million a year and is one of Palmers' top stores, having won its Store of the Year award in 2022.
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ABC Business Sales’ Wellington broker Gerard Dunne says this is one of the best retail businesses he has seen.
“Palmers is an instantly recognisable and highly reputable brand with a 110-year history in New Zealand,” he points out.
“It’s a proven franchise with all the normal support structures in place, but with plenty of freedom for individual store operators to exercise their entrepreneurship and put their own stamp on the business as the current owner has done at this store.
“The store is very well known to Wellingtonians, has huge physical presence and profile, and is strategically positioned in Wellington's northern residential growth corridor with another new high-volume subdivision planned in the near future.”
The store has to be experienced to be fully appreciated, with a garden centre offering that extends to sub-tropical palms, specimen trees and a sourcing service for rare plants as well as being the No1 regional destination for pond and water gardening.
Alongside this sits the highly distinctive lifestyle range, offering customers a total home and lifestyle shopping experience.
While the owner has chosen to be well involved with the business, experienced department managers each take care of their own product category with nine full-time and seven part-time staff at the store.
Most importantly the business comes with a strong lease which will provide reliable tenure through to 2040.
The owner sublets the premises to complementary businesses in the form of an on-site café, a landscape products retailer and a wellbeing centre.
Palmers Plimmerton has thrived through a variety of economies over the last 23 years.
Current owners Richard and Eloise Persson say, “Whatever the economy is doing, Palmers Plimmerton has seemed to thrive.
“In good times we sell more designer decor and spa pools.
“In flatter periods and times of less certainty people gain security from being able to feed their family and economise by doing up their property with new outdoor furniture rather than buying a new home or luxury travel.”
Richard and Eloise have been thinking about selling over the past few years.
With children close to finishing their schooling, they have decided to take some time out, travel overseas and then take a look at what’s next as they transition towards retirement.
Dunne says Palmers Plimmerton is a substantial business with sizeable top and bottom lines.
It has sufficient scale to be operated by a hands-off investor preferring to maintain a strategic and governance role, or a hands-on operator looking for a change of career and a new challenge.
“This is a fun business but one with a good number of moving parts which will satisfy an individual looking for a stimulating commercial challenge along with the promise of significant reward,” he says.
Contact: Gerard Dunne, ph 027 220 8277, email [email protected]
— Article supplied by ABC
