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This year R&S Trade Centre is celebrating 30 years of tireless service to the trade!

All the way back in the year of 1991 R&S Trade Centre opened its doors and began to supply the trade with a small range of Painting & Building supplies. Back then we were situated in a small building in Shakespeare Road. A few years down the track and we outgrew that building, then shifting to a larger building at 59 Orbell Street.

In February 22nd 2011 we like the rest of Christchurch were shaken by the devastating earthquake and the aftershocks which followed. The building began filling with liquefaction, a couple of large cracks appeared in the floor, stock was damaged and lost. However as we have done throughout the years R&S Trade (like the rest of the city) rose to the challenge with a small army of helpers cleaned and restocked the building within the week so we could continue to supply the now very busy trade!

Fast forward to the year 2012 and we had outgrown the old building, so we made the move one street over to our current building at 68 Montreal Street. We then purchased the adjacent storage buildings the year later to help us in our goal to be the Number One Tradesman’s Warehouse! This greatly enabled us to increase our product range and quantity thus helping to provide even more cost effective products direct to the trade.

In 2018 we added the first of our two dedicated FREE Christchurch Area site delivery Vans to provide our customers with a time saving mobile shop. This enables our customers to keep their teams on the job while we deliver what they need, where they need it, when they need it. Our larger van is fully stocked with our most commonly sold products and even includes a mobile EFTPOS for easy pay. In 2019 we set up our first dedicated delivery runs south and north of the city, these run on a Tuesday & Thursday. This was a gamechanger for a number of our customers who work out in the rural areas and don’t have time to make the trip into town for supplies.

In 2020 we launched our new updated website – the main advantage of this website was that customers with accounts could now place their orders online without having to pay at the time. Further features added were the Click & Collect option, an NZ Wide Freight FREE over $300 offer and many more great features.

So what does 2021 bring for R&S Trade Centre?

Paint! Yes Paint Plus to be precise, we have kicked off the new year launching the Paint Plus range instore. We are very excited to now be the exclusive Paint Plus distributor in Christchurch. We now have a full tinting and mixing setup and are able to mix to all the large paint brands. Paint Plus is a New Zealand made eco-friendly paint which is used by hundreds of Painters throughout the country. This is a very competitively priced paint, you can check out our range for yourself here – https://rstradecentre.co.nz/product-category/paint-plus/

So after 30 tireless years servicing Builders, Painters, Plasterers, DIY Home Handy Men & Women with some of the best products and most competitive pricing we kind of think of ourselves as “know-it-alls”. However we are still learning and adapting to the ever changing market that is today, so keep an eye out for further new initiative’s that will continue to spring up.

Here’s to the next 30 years!