Flow-on effects from the Covid-19 pandemic and international shopping trends were among about "half-a-dozen" factors that led to the expected closure of Smith and Caughey's, the company's chairperson says.
A proposal to close the department store was presented to more than 200 staff yesterday.
This morning, the company announced it faced another "unprecedented" challenge.
"On the same day the company began consultations with staff regarding the potential closure of its retail operations, the business was confronted with a significant cyber security incident," a spokesperson said.
Smith and Caughey's chairperson Tony Caughey told Breakfast this morning: "We're trying to get to the bottom of [the cyber attack].
"It's significant enough to mean that we can't open our two physical stores today, Queen St and Newmarket will remain closed.
"Our online system is working and we would encourage people to go online and make their purchases there."
But the stores were closed yesterday so staff could process the closure news, he said – not because of the attack.
"The two were completely unrelated. We wanted to give staff the opportunity to assimilate the proposal we put to them, we haven't made decisions yet, we're in a consultation process," Caughey continued.
"We did want to look after them and give them the time off, but we really didn't expect that it would be two days in a row."
He said it's been a "very emotional 24 hours", with staff upset.
"I think you'd expect this, given the history and what the company's done over such a long period."
The closure of big department stores is a "worldwide trend", Caughey added.
"There's no doubt that the retail landscape is changing, and it's one of the half-a-dozen factors that really have influenced us to take the steps that we have," he said. "We've identified about half-a-dozen factors.
"International trends is one, Covid was another – and it wasn't so much Covid but it's the whole idea of working from home, office workers not coming into town, pedestrian counts are still below where they were pre-Covid.
"It's that whole consequence of the Covid thing which is flowing on to changing shopping behaviours."
Caughey was asked if the state of Auckland CBD was another factor.
"It has been pretty unfriendly in the CBD," he said. "They've been discouraging people from taking cars into town, it's difficult to drive in parts of Queen St – but if you drive into the Civic car park and walk to us, it's very easy.
"It's quite easy if you do it that way, but we want it to be a friendly environment."
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