LSKD Christchurch

LSKD required its new store format delivered in Christchurch, as one of the early stores in a programme that would go on to run across two countries. An early store in a new format carries a question the first one cannot answer. Everything resolved in the first tenancy is either a principle that travels or a decision that only suited that building, and the difference only becomes visible when the format meets a site it was not drawn for. The challenge was to deliver a store that was fully the format while establishing, honestly, which parts of it were repeatable, so that the rollout ahead of it inherited a system rather than a precedent.

Greater Group delivered the store through design, build and project management, applying the format faithfully and identifying where the tenancy genuinely required it to change. That distinction produced the consistent layout core the programme now runs on, in which the point-of-sale position, the community lounge and the fitting zone hold their relationship to one another regardless of the shape of the building around them.

Delivering the New Zealand stores as a cluster concentrated that learning geographically before the format crossed to Australia. What Christchurch established was available to the stores that followed rather than rediscovered at each one, which is the difference between a rollout and a series of individual fit-outs.

The completed store demonstrates that the elements carrying the LSKD format survive a change of building, and that what varies between sites can be limited to the plan rather than the concept. For a brand opening quickly across two countries, that is what makes the pace possible. Each subsequent store adapts a resolved system to its tenancy instead of re-testing the format, which is why the programme could keep opening without the concept degrading as it travelled.