EST. 1918, RESTORED IN 2020
WORDS Karyn Taylor-Moore PHOTOS Supplied
In 1918, after an unsuccessful search for work following WWI, Ernest Munns opened a small menswear shop at 257 Manchester Street in Christchurch. He started out as a one-man operation, but he was soon doing well enough to hire a sales assistant called Carl Smith. Over the next few years, Smith took on more and more responsibility as Munns’ health deteriorated, and he stayed on to manage the shop after Munns’ death in 1927.
Times were tough during the Depression. There were days when the till scarcely opened, and Smith was forced to peddle clothing at the local freezing works. But the business survived, and in 1933 it was doing well enough to move to a central city location on the corner of Colombo and Gloucester Streets. In 1940 Smith bought the business, and over the next few years, he purchased the two adjoining shops and established a tailoring workshop. In 1965 – leveraging off his association with the famous English suit hire company Moss Bros – Carl Smith established the suit hire business which became a central pillar of the Munns brand.
Munns went from strength to strength over the ensuing years and, at its zenith, it had six branches – three of them in Auckland and one each in Wellington, Hamilton, and Christchurch. Munns even managed to weather the devastation wrought by the Christchurch earthquake on 22 February 2011. The quake destroyed the company’s head office and its flagship store on Armagh Street, but Munns Christchurch was soon trading again out of premises at Tower Junction.
During the 2010s, however, Munns faced an increasingly difficult retail environment, and in May 2019, Munns’ then-directors Peter Lucas and Wally Wilson made the difficult decision to liquidate the company – citing the ‘casualisation of menswear’ and the arrival of global high street labels as the primary reasons for its demise.
But the Munns story was far from over. In 2019 Mark and Susan Waterson – owners of Balmoral Suit Hire in Auckland since 2008 – bought the rights and trademark for the iconic menswear brand and began trading as Munns the Man’s Store on 24 February 2020 at The Tannery, a boutique shopping and entertainment complex on Garlands Road in Christchurch.
The Watersons’ initial plan was to run Munns primarily as a suit hire business and to slowly introduce retail as time went by. Then along came the COVID-19 lockdown and suddenly, the weddings, balls, and functions that form the backbone of a suit hire business were cancelled or postponed. Not a couple to give up easily, the Watersons took the plunge into retail a lot earlier than anticipated.
Now, over a year later, Munns has not only survived but it’s also thrived. Mark and Susan are working hard to maintain all the things customers love about Munns – the friendly, knowledgeable service, the attention to detail, the top brands – while updating and refreshing the store with exciting new brands and product lines. With the Watersons at the helm, Munns the Man’s Store is back, and it is better than ever.