QUBIC2.0 – WELCOME HOME.
May 5, 2011

I'd be a liar if I said this hasn't been a long time coming, or if it was an easy process. After almost half a year in purgatory, planning, design, destruction, reconstruction, council permits, and every hair tearing moment in between, we've finally crossed the first finish line. Last night, in a small invite-only gathering of 50 of our closest friends, family, customers and brand partners, we officially announced the completion of Qubic 2.0.

The biggest philosophical change we've decided to implement is the combining of our two stores into one site. That said, that was the single biggest motivator for us to redesign the entire site, in a complete top-down refurbishment, image, logo, and look to see this change through. To do so, we've unfortunately had to put away a few brands, but also introduced a few more that we're starting with. We've taken a lesser focus on footwear compared to the past, from offering 200+ SKUs of footwear to a much more selected offering, in order to allow us to offer a more rounded offering in terms of fashion, accessories, and lifestyle items. This is in line with our vision of giving a wide offering to our consumers which I believe is the future trend of retail, with retailers like colette, Dover Street Market, United Arrows, and others leading the charge. With the myriad range of influences and mix-up of personalised style out there today, it's too hard to pigeon hole our customers into a certain look...but that's a discussion for another blog on another day.

The theme of the new build is "RE-APPROPRIATION". Almost everything inside the new build has been built with recycled materials, from Resene's recycled paint program, to the counters, table tops, and changing room. The idea was to use recycled materials in a consumer environment; we spend all day consuming in our lives that sometimes, we forget that can re-use what we have.

The biggest physical change to the store has to be the completely new store frontage. I never knew just how much of an impact it made to people, until our friends commented last night they thought we had moved the store to a completely new location, or calling us to try and find out where we'd moved to. To compliment the new store frontage, the rear of the store has been brought up 5 metres to incorporate the new stock room setup, but we've also widened the main body of the store by 2 metres as well. It's amazing what removing a few walls can do to a space.

Recycled black-oiled steel was utilized in the construction of our new cabinetry and racking system.

Our changing shed is a commissioned installation by local artist Murray Green; known for his sculptures, and painting using resins and explosives. Again, the shed is built almost entirely out of recycled timber, roofing iron, and items from salvage yards. Here's a funny story though: the exterior timber from the sheds have all come directly from the set of Spartacus: Gods of the Arena. There's a little bit of geek trivia for you.

The shelving timber on our footwear cabinets; old weatherboards from 1940's state houses.

A new section of the store that we're introducing is a magazine, and publications section, featuring titles such as i-D, Purple, 032C, Rouleur, Obscura, Acclaim, amongst others. I don't think I need to tell many people reading this the beauty of print and the feeling of something tangible in your hand that you can relegate to a collection on a bookshelf after you're done with it. In this section we hope to also further introduce music, homeware, and other items.

Our new counter, featuring odd bits and pieces from people's garages and demolition/salvage yards. Yes, all the drawers are functional. You'll notice the plaque across the top; this is the single remaining piece we saved from the demolition team from the previous store's fitout - a vinyl sticker we assigned to a piece of glass at the top of the entranceway back in early 2007... a stark reminder that no matter where we are in the world, this is our home. (or perhaps because there have been far too many late nights in here.)

Our 'living wall'. Just starting out.

A few other views:

To close it off, we've just relaunched qubicstore.com, with the online store returning shortly.

I have too many thank yous to list over the duration of this project, but a very heartfelt thanks to all of our friends, creatives, people who lent us some ideas, our very patient landlord, all of our suppliers and friends around the world, and most of all, to my amazing wife and partner in crime Ivy, and our team - James, Ben, Hal'e, Levin, Karen, Kenny, and all.

Now, onto the future.

QUBIC STORE / QUARTERS BOUTIQUE
160 Broadway
Newmarket
Auckland 1023
NEW ZEALAND
P: +(64)-9-520-1685
E: store@qubicstore.com
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