On January 31, Yaks n Yeti’s Dunedin store will close its doors after 28 years.
Yaks n Yeti’s owner Nicole Bainbridge said at 63 years old, it was simply time to start winding down and go into semi-retirement.
Every year she delayed was another year doing the heavy lifting while being a year older.
She said it was “something that was always going to happen eventually”.
“It’s an end of an era.
“It’s sad, bittersweet — but we’re ready for retirement.”
Ms Bainbridge said it had been a fantastic 28 years.
She and her husband, who are originally from the North Island, started out selling goods at A&P shows around the South Island.
The animals and mountains of the South inspired the name Yaks n Yeti’s.
It then made sense for Ms Bainbridge to set up shop in Otago.
They were quite prepared to move anywhere in the South that wanted them, and landing in Queenstown for their first store, which opened in 1992, was an unexpected destination.
“We did not expect Queenstown to be our place that we’d live,” she said.
In 1997 a manager at the store offered to make the move to Dunedin to open a store there.
Then another staff member offered to do the same in Invercargill.
There were then three, until the Queenstown shop closed in 2020.
Ms Bainbridge said the Dunedin store was her “baby”, and while she knew the time would eventually come, there was still some sadness accompanying the closure.
“When it’s been 28 years, people remember coming in as little kids with their first lot of pocket money.
“I just want to give a big thank you for our customers.”
She said there was enough stock banked up in the Dunedin store to supply the Invercargill store for quite a while, and Dunedin customers would be able to take advantage of some quite good Christmas deals before the shop’s closure.
While the Dunedin store will shut on January 31, the Invercargill store will keep going.
But having just the one shop to focus on would free up time for Ms Bainbridge and her husband to travel around and revisit some of the places they had been to in the past.
“We’ve been travelling all our life, basically — since day dot — and I’m quite enjoying going back to places, so we’re going to be keeping on the road.”
