Someone who’s almost synonymous with Mitre 10 Mega Queenstown is retail manager Marlene Crimp, who’s been with the company for almost 31 years. She tells PHILIP CHANDLER how she got into managing stores, recounts her highlights and reveals the one thing she’s refused to do
Thirty-year retailers are pretty thin on the ground in Queenstown.
One such is Marlene Crimp, retail manager for one of the town’s largest stores, Mitre 10 Mega, who joined the original H&J’s Mitre 10 in 1993.
She insists her life’s unremarkable, but, as she admits, ‘‘30-odd years in one job is reasonably significant, you don’t see that these days’’.
Now 65, Crimp was born and educated in Nelson, and after leaving school at 16 — ‘‘I wasn’t into study or anything majorly’’ — she became an office junior in a department store.
She married Ray Crimp in Nelson in 1978; they bought a house in nearby Brightwater and raised two sons, Phillip and Matthew.
Marlene worked for her mother in a TAB agency in nearby Wakefield then, when she fell ill, kept it going.
After her mum died, she was offered a TAB agency in Shannon, near Levin, which crime-wise was far less peaceful than Brightwater, she says.
Marlene ran the branch for five years until, like many others, it was closed.
Ray, who had been a house husband, became head greenkeeper for the Horowhenua District Council, preparing cricket grounds and such like.
‘‘That was how my interest in gardening came, because he was studying greenkeeping and I was learning about grass and stuff.
‘‘So I picked up floriculture, we put in a huge tunnel house on our property, and grew carnations for market.’’
After seven years up north, Marlene and Ray wanted to head back south and, after throwing a dart on a map, Ray bought a farmlet in Southland’s Dipton.
Ray worked in forestry, however things were ‘‘a bit fickle’’, so after a year he got a greenkeeper’s job at Queenstown Golf Club’s Kelvin Heights course — that was in 1993.
Marlene initially stayed in Dipton, with Ray returning in the weekends.
He’d heard Mitre 10 was looking for ‘‘a garden person’’ for its new Frankton Village store, and Marlene was interviewed in Dipton by the store manager when passing through to HQ in Invercargill.
Initially she ran what passed for the garden department — ‘‘a three by three cage outside the back in a carpark’’.
In 1997 the store manager left and she took over, then was initially retail manager when the much larger Mitre 10 set up in Remarkables Park in 2000.
Her title reverted to store manager in 2007, but she’s been retail manager since Mitre 10 Mega opened in 2015.
As to why she’s stayed so long, Marlene says ‘‘it’s kept interesting because it’s evolved’’.
‘‘People say I’m not good at change, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot of change, so I can’t be that bad.’’
She’s also felt privileged to work for the store-owning Smith family — ‘‘they have really looked after me’’.
Is she a tough boss?
‘‘I’m sure some people will say I’m tough, I don’t think I am, but you have to set expectations, like in any role.’’
Though not on the shop floor so much these days, Marlene says she has plenty of product knowledge, and has taken horticulture and HR papers off her own bat.
‘‘I can do gardening, I can mix paints — the only thing I can’t really do is cut keys.’’
A highlight came in 2012 when, at a conference in Melbourne, the Remarkables Park outlet won Mitre 10 ‘store of the year’.
Staff have also put on surprise 25th and 30th anniversary functions for her.
Her only hiccup came about 10 years ago when she took about seven months off for a benign tumour on her spine.
Till then her main out-of-work interest had been Saturday golf at Kelvin Heights with a group of girlfriends — they’d either play golf ‘‘or just have a good old gossip’’.
During Covid, Ray was made redundant and retired.
He and Marlene sold their Frankton home of 27 years and moved to Cromwell where they supported Matthew, a chef, into opening a restaurant in Bannockburn and a cafe in Cromwell.
At work, Marlene admits ‘‘I may have indicated I’ve probably got no more than two years in me’’.
As a result, her main goal is ‘‘what I can add as value to get the next people up to me’’.
Once she pulls pin, she’ll miss the staff and customers.
‘‘I’ve made a lot of friends with the teams over the years, but also with the customers — they become a part of who you are.’’
