Timeline

After meeting Leonora Blight during a visit to his brother Harry at the Globe Hill mine, a young TA (Thomas Arthur) Dellaca packed up shop in Australia and moved to New Zealand, where he and Lena were married and he began work in the mine.

After an uncle died and left Thomas £68, Thomas left the mining business and established TA Dellaca Drapery & Boots... the beginning of the retail empire that would end up as Postie Plus today.

Fire destroyed the store and all its stock, but Thomas rebuilt the store and started again.

When the Globe Hill mine shut down, the Dellaca family and the business moved to Reefton.

Tom Jr joined the family business as an apprentice and in 1928 and in the early 1930s Percy Dellaca (another son of Thomas) joined and they expanded into menswear and boyswear.

Thanks to the success and expansion of the Reefton store during the '30s and early '40s, on November 6, 1946 Dellacas opened a second store in Westport, which soon expanded to include dress fabrics, furnishing, knitting, hosiery and ladieswear.

The 3rd generation of Dellaca family members started joining the business, with Richard and Bruce joining in early 1960 and Murray, John, Neil and Kerry following later in the '60s.

A fashion-focused TA Dellaca branch opened in Greymouth with the promise from John Dellaca to "specialise in younger fashions, with lines to suit the more fashionable older woman." Later in the year Dellacas also opened a 'Drapery Discounter' in Greymouth.

The company decided to test the possibility of a mail-order business, a newsprint catalogue, called 'Mail Order Warehouse', was sent out to people who replied to an ad in the New Zealand Women's Weekly and New Zealand Farmer, requesting a catalogue.

A small colour catalogue was produced by Postie Fashions, featuring fashionable garments with the younger customer in mind. A year later Postie Fashions and Mail Order Warehouse were receiving up to 600 orders per day from customers all over NZ and beyond.

The Dellaca family opened the first Clothes for Less store on Palmerston Street in Westport, over the next few years a whole chain of Clothes for Less stores were opened across the West Coast.

Clothes for Less stores were officially re-branded to Postie Plus stores.

With the success of the physical retail stores, the mail order catalogue business was no longer needed and closed in 2001.

With business booming in 2002, Babycity and Postie Plus were merged and the new look and theme stores were rolled out over the coming years.

Postie purchased women's clothing chain Rendells and the manchester chain Arbuckles and in September 2003 the group was floated on the NZ Stock Exchange, becoming a publicly listed company.

To better focus on the apparel side of the business, Arbuckles was sold in 2008 and in 2012 Baby City was sold.

In July Postie Plus was purchased by Pepkor Limited, a major global retailer headquartered in South Africa.

Pepkor became a member of the Steinhoff International Group, a South African-based international retail holding company, which operates in Europe, Africa and Australasia.

In April Postie relaunched with a new look and a new everyday low pricing model, meaning customers no longer need to choose between great quality and great prices — they can have both every day.

Steinhoff South East Asia was renamed to become Greenlit Brands.

Postie now has 63 stores nationwide and employs over 420 people.