Company Overview Of Bunnings

In 1886, Bunnings was founded in Western Australia by two brothers who had come from England. They started off as a private company focusing on sawmilling; however it became a public company in 1952 and afterwards expanded into the retail sector, taking over several hardware stores. Through the 70s, 80s and 90s Bunnings began to expand into other states and in 1994 it opened its first warehouse-style store in Melbourne. In that same year it was bought by Wesfamers and subsequently opened several more warehouse style stores. In 2001, Wesfarmers bought the Howard Smith Group, allowing Bunnings to take over the BBC Hardware network stores in Australia and New Zealand allowing Bunnings to expand into the New Zealand market, marking their first international expansion. In the next few years,

Then in 2016, Bunnings expanded further; into the UK and Ireland markets with the purchase of Homebase stores (and a former B&Q store). Several of these stores have been converted to Bunnings, some new Bunnings have been built and some still remain as Homebase. However, this has not been without it challenges. In the first half of the final year losses blew out to about $165 million. A review is underway into its UK and Ireland operations where all option were on the table including an exit which may see the UK Bunnings go in a similar to Masters in Australia. A major factor in these loses is the disillusion of customers by removing popular product ranges as a result of moving to the Bunnings format. During the winter months sales reduced the most as they didn’t have the right products. Wesfarmers will not start any more conversions