Frank Penhalluriack

Frank Penhalluriack
Owner 

Penhalluriack’s Building Supplies
Caulfield VIC

How long have you been in hardware?
This was a derelict site before we moved in and opened the business
in 1975. We’ve been here ever since.

What type of customers do you have?
We’re about 30 % trade and 70 % DIY. We’ve always had a 
very strong DIY customer base.

Was it those customers that, in the end, were responsible for you going to jail?
Well, I suppose you could say that. This community wanted to be able 
to shop on the weekend. So that’s what we gave them. We’d been 
open on a Sunday for five years before we learnt that some regulations 
from a State Commission in 1885 made it illegal.

What happened?
I ended up in jail for 19 days. After I got out, the summonses just 
kept on coming. At one point I was fined $500,000, which was a
fortune in 1985. However we won in the end and we never stopped
trading on weekends, even while I was in jail.

When you joined HBT, you were
pretty sceptical. Why?
Our experiences with other groups weren’t good. We don’t accept that everything that HBT does is always right for us. But that’s OK, we’re 
allowed to. That’s the real beauty of HBT. They don’t demand your loyalty.
They offer a service. If it’s worth accepting you do, if not you don’t.

Is it OK if people want to talk to you about HBT?
Our number is 03 9523 6000