Back Open: The Whole Story

Sunday January 16 and the above picture tells you what store looked like after 2.1m of water went through it with the Brisbane January floods.The floor is covered with inch thick sludge and mud, and the water has done amazing things to the pallets of my stock around the store.

So, we then set about the cleanup and rebuild of the store. The cleanup took up three week, the de-rack and re-rack and floor grind/polish another three weeks, and finally the merchandising set-up the final three weeks. A new store taken approximately 19 weeks of planning to opening, whereas we had nine weeks to do this amazing job. The end results are below.

The store looked amazing, and we also had some fun and celebrities to help us share our opening with.

Curly and Bob the Builder

Curly and Humphrey B Bear

Curly and Jessica Mauboy

My Good friend from Bodytrim, Geoff Jowett, came up for the opening and did a special BTTV clip on the opening of the store. Here is a pic of Geoff and my wife, Sharon.

One thing I will say, is there was enormous pressure on us to deliver a result. I speak highly of my leadership team, and continue to do so.....however some have handled the pressure better than others. Some have failed at the end of the process. I myself may have been that way myself, under the previous model of Curly, with the extra 25kgs hanging around I would have been a physical mess, while without the coping mechanisms with the exercise and diet, I would have been a mental mess. During this intense time, I adhered to about 75% of my usual routine of walks, exercise and diet.I didn't sweat the small stuff when I couldn't adhere to it

Instead, I have come out of this stronger than ever. As did others on my leadership team who have other mechanisms on how to cope.Those that don't have struggled.

On a final note, the Rocklea Bunnings was officially opened by the Qld Premier Anna Bligh. This Youtube video is a classic now for me, as the Premier of Qld calls me Curly.(about 1 minute in) Its nice recognition for a job well done by my team, and very impressed by Anna, to make it personal. My team got  a kick out of it as well, from what I can gather.We are open....and Curly has some normality back!!!