Business booms in the incredible shrinking town

Dec 6 2006

Article by Rick Long.

Wairarapa Times-Age (NZ) Wed Nov 29th 2006.

"There is a misunderstanding by marketers in our culture about what freedom of choice is. In the market, it is equated with multiplying choice. This is a misconception. If you have infinite choice, people are reduced to passivity."
- Todd Gitlin
I visited the cavernous new supermarket gracing Masterton's Kuripuni shopping centre at the weekend at marveled at the audacity of the Foodstuffs Co-operative to build such an edifice in a town that is by all accounts actually contracting.
I say 'by all accounts' because according to the N.Z. Statistics website Masterton now has a population of 17,920 whereas back in 1996 the same website informs us that our population was 18,189. Statistics New Zealand does say the 2006 figures are provisional and have been that way since May. Final figures will not be available until the 6th of December, so it's as well these people weren't contracted to count the votes for the general election.
Pak'n'Save was packed to the gunwales when I was there with eager shoppers pushing the largest grocery trolleys known to mankind, but even then, some of these appeared to nearly buckle under the loads that they were being forced to carry.
Car parks were scarcer than hens teeth though hens themselves were in abundance; the force-fed, cooked and frozen variety particularly. Their by-product, eggs, filled enough shelves to make a soufflé of Guinness Book of Records proportions.
The company appears to store its surplus stock on the shelves above its ready-to-sell goods and I made a mental note to avoid the place during an earthquake. I also wished Florus Bosch had had a hand in the planning and allowed for an underground carpark because although I only went in for a look, in fact I nearly filled the mini-trailers they call trolleys, reluctantly paid for the plastic bags to hold the unintended purchase and then walked about ten streets away to where I had found the only available parking space in what you might call the immediate vicinity.
On my way homeward I passed the near empty Woolworth's supermarket carpark and had a pang of conscience that was only momentary when I thought of the small fortune we have poured into their expansive Australian bank account over many years. For all that I probably will return, even if it is just to get a carpark near their front door.

A few weeks back I visited a small town in Queensland called Maleny, inland from coastal Coloundra, where Woolworth's have just opened a brand new supermarket. Although Maleny is not much smaller than Masterton and has a growing rather than a shrinking population, the town only had one other supermarket, an IGA store in the middle of the town centre. Woolworth's new Maleny store however is almost totally bereft of customers and there are signs on fences all over town proclaiming "We won't shop there."
It seems Woolworth's bought the old saleyards at one end of the main street which was next to a stream that housed, among other things, Australia's prized, but rare, platypus. The locals were aghast that Woolworth's would construct a supermarket virtually over the creek and protested vigorously to stop the store from being built. Police reinforcements even had to be brought in from Brisbane and the situation got pretty rugged.
Eventually Woolworth's won their case in the Environment court and went ahead with the project, but their carpark is empty.
Some people even go and appear to shop there, piling up their trolleys with groceries then leave them unpaid at the checkout. This is known as the "trolley challenge" and protesters right across Australia are reportedly filling Woolworth trolleys, leaving them unpaid and with notes showing their support for the Maleny stand-off.
Apparently staff have been told to park their cars in the carpark to give the impression that someone is shopping there, but this is a dead giveaway because these cars are parked at the far end of the forecourt and those parks near the door remain tantalisingly empty.
Some people I spoke to there admitted the whole protest was a bit of a sham. The creek, next to a leaching saleyards, was hardly pristine and in fact Woolworth's had cleaned up the area and had acted impeccably in their treatment of the environment. But to be seen shopping there meant you risked being ostracised by the more militant members of the community.
The owner of Maleny's IGA supermarket is laughing all the way to the bank and says he's averaging 13,000 customer's week and business is booming.
If you count Gull and Moore-Wilson's, Masterton has six supermarkets despite the town exhibiting a population decline in the last ten years. But the mysterious economic boom shows no sign of abating and businesses continue to thrive despite this conundrum.
Meanwhile Pak'n'Save can just thank their lucky stars there were no platypus's in the Kuripuni stream.
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