page_title: Bunnings Warehouse
section_title: Store development post-1994
hierarchical_section_title: Bunnings Warehouse / History / Store development post-1994
caption_attribution_description: English: The Peek Frean tower at the intersection of Parramatta road and Frederick street, Ashfield. The property is now operated by the Ashfield branch of Bunnings Warehouse.
context_page_description: Bunnings Group, trading as Bunnings Warehouse, is an Australian household hardware chain. The chain has been owned by Wesfarmers since 1994, and has stores in Australia and New Zealand.
  Bunnings was founded in Perth, Western Australia in 1886, by two brothers who had immigrated from England. Initially a limited company focused on sawmilling, it became a public company in 1952 and subsequently expanded into the retail sector, purchasing several hardware stores. Bunnings began to expand into other states in the 1990s, and opened its first warehouse-style store in Melbourne in 1994. The chain currently has 295 stores and over 30,000 employees.
  Bunnings has a market share of around 50 percent in the Australian Do-It-Yourself hardware market, with competing chains including Home Timber & Hardware, Mitre 10 and various independent retailers.
  Bunnings runs community events outside or in its stores, including sausage sizzles and do it yourself workshops.
context_section_description: After the acquisition of Bunnings by Wesfarmers, the first Bunnings Warehouse was opened in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine by Victorian premier Jeff Kennett and Joe Boros, the managing director of Bunnings. This was quickly followed by three other Melbourne stores. Subsequently, new warehouses have been opened, on average, every three months across Australia. Development in Sydney and Brisbane proved more difficult than in other areas, as large blocks of land in the metropolitan area were limited. In 1997, the remaining smaller-format McEwans stores were renamed "Bunnings".
  In August 2001, Wesfarmers bought the Howard Smith Group, owner of BBC Hardware, previously Nock & Kirby, and big-box offshoot, Hardwarehouse. This supplemented the Bunnings national network by several dozen stores, many of them large Hardwarehouse stores in Sydney, Brisbane and New Zealand. Hardwarehouse had been dominant in New South Wales and Queensland, but the purchase complemented Bunnings' prior domination in Victoria, where Hardwarehouse had only seven stores to Bunnings' twenty at the time of the buy-out. The market leader at the time of purchase was Mitre 10 with 12% market share but inclusion of the Hardwarehouse and BBC Hardware stores brought Bunnings market share to 13.5%.
  Hardwarehouse and BBC Hardware stores retained their branding for a year, while television advertisements were tagged with each of Bunnings Warehouse, Hardwarehouse and BBC Hardware during this transition period. Lower-volume stores were closed and, in 2002, remaining Hardwarehouses were renamed Bunnings Warehouse.
  From 2004 to 2008, Bunnings purchased and re-branded Mitre 10 stores in Griffith, Kempsey, Randwick and Wodonga, Magnet Mart in Griffith and a Mitre 10 Mega store in Modbury. In 2008 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) looked into its acquisitions of five Mitre 10 stores, as it deemed the purchases would be anti-competitive. In February 2009, the ACCC allowed the purchases, finding that "the acquisition of the Mitre 10 stores did not significantly alter the level of competition in the relevant market."
  Since the development of the Bunnings Warehouse stores, two general operational formats exist: Bunnings and Bunnings Warehouse. The smaller "Bunnings" stores stock a more limited range of hardware, whereas the larger "Bunnings Warehouses" contain a more comprehensive hardware range and, often, garden supplies including plants. Over time, some smaller-format Bunnings stores have gradually been closed. However, 2015 saw six new stores open in Victoria, mainly in smaller regional markets and inner-suburban areas. The "big box" format accounts for 167 stores of the network of 280.
caption: Bunnings Warehouse Ashfield. A converted industrial building and former Hardwarehouse.
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