Kmart opens Napier store in Onekawa 10 Mar, 2021 04:14 AM Quick Read Opening day at Kmart in Napier. Photo / Paul Taylor Hawkes Bay Today An evolving drama over more than three decades in retailing competition in New Zealand seems to have gone the full circle with Kmart's opening of a new store in Napier. The Australia-anchored chain opened its first New Zealand department store in Henderson, Auckland, in 1988, and Hawke's Bay was soon jostling in the pack seeking to establish the first Kmart plaza in the lower North Island. The nod went to Whanganui, but the race quickly switched, in the best, or worst, traditions of Hawke's Bay's notorious twin-city rivalry, to whether the first on the east coast of the North Island would go to Napier or Hastings.