FOLLOWING the grand opening of the recently completed New World supermarket building on Tuesday, last week Taumarunui historian Ron Cooke pointed out that the site has been the town’s go-to shopping destination for many years.
Carran’s Shopping Centre was developed on the site in 1966, with one building housing a SuperValue supermarket, plus a fabric shop, a wine business, a beauty salon, a photographer, an electrician, a coffee lounge, and many others as years went by.
Then in 1979, the site was redeveloped as Taumarunui’s first New World supermarket.
A Taumarunui Gazette article from April 1979 said Carran’s Super Value had declined an offer to join the newly merged Woolworths/Supervalue supermarket chain and opted instead to join the New World group. Their existing building on the site was fitted out for the grand opening of Taumarunui’s first New World in July that year.
“If you thought the opening of our second New World on Tuesday was a big deal, you should have seen the opening of the first one,” Ron said.
Newspaper reports said a large crowd thronged the doors for 10 minutes before they opened and when Allan Carran cut the ribbon, the 88 available supermarket trollies were quickly snapped up by shoppers. Taumarunui’s long defunct radio station, 1ZU, did a live broadcast as waves of shoppers entered the store, creating massive sales figures by day’s end.
The full range of the first-day promotions were not recorded but a photo in the Taumarunui Bulletin showed a cigarette packet stacking competition was one of them.
“The key person in all this was Brian Carran, who entered his father’s business as a part-time student in 1960 and took up full-time work and a partnership in 1968 when he was just 19.
Following his father’s retirement in 1981, Brian took charge of the business of 30 employees and proceeded to quadruple the turnover and increase the number of employees to 87.
It was said Brian’s key management principles were to maintain business integrity, serve clients’ needs and motivate, train, and show concern for staff.
Brian went on to own Mt Albert Pak’nSave, where his sensitive approach to management of staff was lauded in New Zealand Management Magazine. An article described how he strived to meet the cultural needs of his multi-national staff and encourage work-life balance among employees.
The approach won the supermarket the Manaki Tangata Award for Innovation. During his Taumarunui years, Brian was also part of the international leadership of the Jaycee organisation, at one point, narrowly missing out as world president. “Brian made his mark not only in business, but also as a leader in the community, we were lucky to have him here,” Ron said.
