BBC Hardware - History - Store Development Post-1994

Store Development Post-1994

After the acquisition of Bunnings by Wesfarmers, the first Bunnings Warehouse was opened in the Melbourne suburb of Sunshine by then 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 has proven more difficult than in other areas, as large blocks of land in the metropolitan area are 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 and their big box offshoot, Hardwarehouse. This supplemented 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's 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, New South Wales, Kempsey, New South Wales, Randwick, New South Wales and Wodonga, Victoria, Magnet Mart at Griffith, New South Wales and one of Mitre 10's first MEGA stores in Modbury, South Australia. In 2008 the A.C.C.C. 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 older "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, smaller-format Bunnings stores have gradually been closed. The "big box" format comprises 167 stores of the network of 280.