Kmart has officially opened its new 6,700sqm 24-hour store in Westgate Town Centre, Auckland, making it the retailer’s largest store floor in New Zealand. The new store will be the first in the country to adopt Australia’s refreshed store layout in a bid to deter shoplifting.
Combining larger and more intuitive departments, the Plan C+ format enables improved product presentation, expanded self-service technology, and more efficient back-of-house operations. Key to the new layout is the relocation of checkouts to the front of the store, following customer feedback.
Kmart Group general manager of property Ben Smith told The New Zealand Herald that the format was designed to be more intuitive for customers.
“We tried to create a store that our customers want to love and enjoy, and one of the things that we knew was key was to expand our womenswear department, expand our beauty department, and make it a real destination experience,” Smith said.
“When we do all of those things for our customers, what we need to do is make sure that the final moment is as painless as possible, so bringing the checkouts to the front makes a lot of sense from a store layout perspective.”
With repositioned checkouts, the Plan C+ store layout has allowed more space to expand other departments, including womenswear, beauty and homewares. The redesign has also enabled the introduction of new technology, with select Kmart stores across Australia and New Zealand having adopted an automated, radio-frequency identification (RFID) robot called Tory.
With plans to expand its use for general merchandise, Tory currently operates in fashion and bedding departments, scanning product RFID signatures to identify where stock is needed.
New kiosks for larger items, such as outdoor equipment and nursery products have also been introduced at the Westgate store. To save space on the shop floor, customers will now browse those larger items through kiosks. Once they’ve decided on an item, they will receive a ticket to collect it from a collection zone. With approximately 40,000 stock keeping units (SKUs) in the Westgate store, prioritising smaller merchandise allowed more items on shelves.
Operating 24-hours a day, the new store will create 200 local jobs, growing the retailer’s existing network of 3,000 team members across New Zealand. Over the past decade, Kmart has doubled its store footprint across the country, with Westgate store opening bringing its total to 28 stores.
