By James Wells

COBURG: Clive Peeters managing director Greg Smith yesterday put its share market woes to one side and celebrated the opening of a new 3,500 square metre store in the inner-city Melbourne suburb of Coburg.

Smith told Current the new store is strategically positioned in the Melbourne market to take advantage of its demographics, and, “is in line with our strategic thinking of opening stores in existing markets where synergies can be achieved,” he said.

“Coburg is one of the few inner city sites of its kind and puts us into an area where there are a lot of developments and renovations in the domestic market which are particularly important for our kitchen business,” Smith continued.

“We are anchoring a new homemaker site with Bunnings in a heavily populated area which we have been looking to target for several years.

“Complementing the Coburg site which also includes a 1,000 square metre warehouse are existing Clive Peeters stores at Richmond and Malvern, which provide more than satisfactory returns to our business.

“So you can see how excited we are to open a store of this magnitude in an area like Coburg.”

Victoria is the largest state for the $600 million publicly-listed Clive Peeters business with stores located at Bayswater, Bendigo, Braybrook, Dandenong, Malvern, Moorabbin, Mornington, Richmond, Ringwood, Thomastown and Warnambool.