Good Thing Dreaming

We can still remember the exact moment we looked at each other and decided to stop talking about opening a lifestyle store in Mount Albert and actually do it. We’d been dreaming about it for ages—lamenting the fact that you couldn’t even buy a decent birthday card in the village, wishing our main street better reflected what locals wanted, and endlessly wandering into other suburbs whenever we needed a gift or just a browse through something beautiful.

One day we simply said, “Right. That’s it. We’re doing this.” No dramatic fanfare—just two locals finally leaping into something we believed our community would love. We’ve always adored lifestyle stores with a mix of homeware, gifts, clothing and those covetable little surprises, and we were confident, with our love of art and design, that we could create something special.

The first big task was finding the perfect spot. We drew up a wish list of buildings—and somehow managed to secure the gorgeous 1920s premises at the top of our list. It had seen everything: a local store, a Thai provisions shop for more than 20 years, and upstairs a T-shirt factory, a Buddhist sanctuary and even a dentist. It had history—and a lot of grime.

We set ourselves a three-month deadline to transform it. Madness, really. We stripped out layers of curtains, lino, random light fittings, old carpet—everything. We repainted the bright orange frontage in charcoal, rolled white onto the walls, and painted the floors a soft grey. We remember tag teaming on painting the floors into the night, swapping out to take our collective seven kids to soccer club photos while the other kept painting. It was chaos, exhausting, and completely wonderful.

Good Thing opened in September 2015. Ten years on, it’s been everything we hoped for—and so much more. We’ve watched the store evolve, survived COVID lockdowns, tangled with supply chain nightmares, sweated through economic ups and downs, and somehow we’re still here—still laughing, still caffeinating, still welcoming the loveliest customers who have genuinely become friends.

Our product mix has grown too, especially with clothing. We’ve stocked Melbourne-based Elk from day one—a brand we loved long before we had our own shop—and we’re proud to have one of the best Elk selections in Auckland. Their pieces feel like an extension of the Good Thing personality: thoughtful, original and designed to make women feel good.

We’ve also grown our little work family and over the years have employed ore than 30 wonderful women both in short and long term roles. Our team's personalities, talents and humour are woven into the very fabric of Good Thing.

As for the two of us—we still can’t quite believe what we’ve built. We’ve shared the big highs, the gritty lows, and everything in between. After ten years, countless late nights, and one global pandemic, we still turn up excited to work together, bounce around ideas, and dream up what’s next.

Taking that leap was one of the best decisions we’ve ever made—and we’re endlessly grateful to the community that has cheered us on every step of the way.