Newspaper Article – Poppelwell the president

Poppelwell the president

Our new Havelock North Business Association president, Michael Poppelwell is no stranger to the position – this will be his third stint in the job.

‘Poppelwell’ is an unusual name and we asked Michael of its origins. “My ancestors came from Whitby, a fishing village on the east coast of England just south of the Scottish border. My great-grandfather William, was the captain of a ship which brought immigrants to New Zealand. He stayed on, sailing coastal ships around NZ and eventually settled down as a farmer in Gore – the sort of block where they had to break in the land from scratch and cut roads with a bullock team.

“My grandfather was born in Gore but found his way to Hastings, running a flax mill near Pakipaki. My father, Harry was born there, and my mother was a Scottish lass from Stirling.”

Harry Poppelwell was a well-known identity in local politics and Michael, his younger son, has followed his father’s footsteps in both civic service and business.

“My father Harry was always interested in drapery,” Michael tells us. “He worked for all the big names in Hastings’ early history – Blackmores, Miller [Millar] and Giorgi, Roach’s… and eventually started his own business in 1929, on Russell Street next to the old Post Office.

“I was educated at St Josephs and St John’s College in Hastings before starting work at Poppelwells in 1960. At the height of his ‘empire’, Harry had branches in Waipukurau, Flaxmere, Hastings, Napier and Havelock North.

“I came out to the Village 23 years ago now, and I have seen some remarkable changes. This shop was then Thorps Menswear – partner to the Thorps Fashion Centre which is still next door. The area on Joll Road behind us was just a paddock and the BNZ site was an old wooden building – a grocery and bookstore – and Triplow’s New World store was where Jackson’s Bakery is now.”

Michael has been involved with quite a number of clubs and organisations – most notably on the Committee for the Waimarama Surf Lifesaving Club, and holding a number of official places over the years with the Havelock North Rotary Club.

“It is an excellent way of getting to know other business people in a social context, as well as enabling me to put something back into the community,” Michael explains. He has also spent more than nine years representing Hawke’s Bay at the New Zealand Retailers Association meetings.

After about eight years in the Village, Michael took on his first term as president of the (as it was then) HN Retailers Association. “It was after a period of relative inactivity – a non- functioning time. We had just done the Home Free giveaway promotion which had been a tremendous success, but left retailers drained of energy and finances.

“We got the first CBD development of the Village on the way 15 years ago, and it was a great leap forward. Things like the brick planters have come in for a fair amount of criticism but they did tidy up the Village considerably. (The original design had them enclosing angle parking spaces rather than parallel parks, by the way.) The development really did put Havelock North retailing ‘on- the-map’ and served as a model for a number of other similar promotions around the country. Civic officers from all over the place were coming through and looking at what had been done here.

“Five years later I took on another three year term as President before yielding the role to June Gay two years ago.

“Time has flown, and it is hard to believe that it is 15 years since we undertook those CBD developments. They really are looking a little tired now. I am very pleased to be involved in the current re-development plans – I think that we have exciting times ahead.”

Michael met and married Betty when she was a nurse at Hastings hospital. They have four children: Richard, Mark, Fiona and Stuart; and now two grand daughters.

Retailing has been rewarding, but also challenging at times. “It is hard yakka to be honest,” Michael maintains. “Things have picked up again in the last four years, but the advent of big chain bargain stores threatened most retailers for a while.