Faradays luxury department store to open on Queen St by August with 130 brands and 80 new jobs

“It’s a once in a 100 year opportunity to deliver something on this scale.”

The first five months have focused largely on the building works, with plenty of involvement from engineers, base build architects, Fearon Hay Architects and building by Cape Construction.

The biggest change so far is the two large chasms that have opened between the basement and first floor, creating two roughly 12m-tall openings in the centre of the building.

The gaps will be filled with a three-storey concrete staircase inspired by American artist Donald Judd, and a three-storey elevator for accessibility.

Dadelszen confirmed each piece of steel for the staircase weighs roughly three tonnes, and will be installed on three different dates, with the elevator similarly being worked on for installation.

“This has been the bulk of the construction. A huge amount of work has been done strengthening the building and making sure we can move people through the space before the fit-out arrives.

“The fit-out’s been in production for the last four months. It’s all being made offshore and being imported here at the moment.”

Dadelszen expects the fit-out to begin in May.

Starting in the basement, a side wall has been knocked down to turn the space into an L-shaped area, offering more space downstairs for vendors.

The space was originally pitched as a unique espresso music bar, emulating the experience found in Dover Street Market’s store in Ginza, Tokyo, but Dadelszen has expanded on what to expect.

Alongside the music bar, customers will have access to a wide range of goods and services, including sneakers, denim, contemporary fashion, women’s lingerie, wellness and a bookstore.

The space will also have more entry-level products like stationery, as well as dedicated treatment rooms for a couple of brands.

Dadelszen was tight-lipped on what brands to expect across the building’s three floors, but confirmed that around 227,000 different stock-keeping-units (SKUs) will be available from the aforementioned 130 brands.

“We’ve got an off-site storage location because we’ve decided to trade as much of the space as we possibly can. Obviously it’s not cheap to rent on Queen Street, so we’ve got to trade every square metre.

“We’ve modelled the square metre of every floor with each brand to know where they will be, just so we can measure its performance.”

The ground floor, which used to be home to a rug dealership, has been cleared, ready for Faradays and its team to progress with the fit-out.

The space will be split between the building’s central lobby, with one side dedicated to menswear, while the other is dedicated to beauty, fragrance, women’s contemporary fashion and childrenswear.

Dadelszen confirmed 12 brands are set to fill the menswear space, the majority new to the New Zealand market.

For the women’s side, he said an “incredible brand” had been secured for the store’s launch, tasked with enticing customers off the busy street outside.

“We’re terming it as an activation space that will be constantly changing and engaging with the world outside. It will be something that we’ll be looking to edit monthly or bimonthly.

“With every brand that we’re buying, we’ve been really cognisant that while we have luxury brands, we want to be accessible.”

More announcements on the brands coming to Faradays would be made in the near future, he said.

The building’s first floor will be dedicated to Faradays’ high-end luxury offering and a restaurant with a full commercial kitchen.

Dadelszen confirmed the business has had talks with an interested chef, and final decisions are to be made soon.

Across the whole site Dadelszen expected at least 80 staff to run the store, all to be employed by Faradays.

Now roughly halfway through the renovation, Dadelszen was confident the project would stick to its $30m budget, although he was upfront about some of the unanticipated challenges that have impacted the build, namely the conflict in Iran.

He said the cost of freight for building materials and products had been impacted, some prices increasing 20%, noting that the floors for the buildings are being transported by air and sea from Hungary.

“A lot of stuff is going on aeroplanes and not on boats at the moment, which we are having to mitigate. But we’re just accepting that that is just part of doing business at the moment.

“Thankfully we shipped all of the marble prior to anything happening, and that’s all here now. We’re resilient and we’ve had to become resilient.”

Dadelszen said he felt the weight of responsibility grow as the project progressed, sharing how obsessively he had looked back at the history of the building.

He’s also keen to dispel concerns about the concept of the department store in 2026, especially following the closure of Smith and Caughey’s in May last year.

“We’re certain that there’s a market here, and we just think that we need to address it appropriately, which we will.

“I think when you see what our buying team have worked on, everything feels like it goes together, and that’s something that you only get to experience when you’re in the space when it’s finished. I feel like we’ve pulled that together really well.”

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.