When Peter Dalla came home to Griffith in 1972 to help in the family store after his father fell ill, he couldn’t imagine how far things could come.
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After more than eight decades as a family-owned business and Griffith institution, Peter Dalla has decided its to move on.
His Ron Dalla opened the original eponymous store in 1934 on the lower block of Banna Avenue. For the first few years it operated as both a menswear and dry cleaning business.
“The bottom block, down by the co-op was where it was all happening,” Mr Peter Dalla recalled.
Mr Dalla returned to Griffith in 1972 after his father suffered a stroke, continuing to work within the business as Ron recuperated.
Shortly after his father’s passing in 1984, Peter purchased a building in Banna Avenue’s middle block where the store still stands today.
“Some people ask if we’re still successful and I like to point out that we’re still here,” he said.
Mr Dalla says within both stores they’ve been able to serve around four generations of customers.
“It makes you a bit of an institution in town. You get to know people and their faces, their stories.”
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When asked why he’s decided to move on, Mr Dalla says its time for the company to move in a new direction.
“At some stage you have to hand over and have an orderly transition,” he said.
“We’re not seeing it as the end of anything, it’s just the start of a new era. I want whoever comes in to make things bigger and better.”
Ron Dalla has always been a store ahead of its time.
“I was actually the second business in Australia who put barcoding into retail,” he said.
“Barcodes didn’t exist before then.”
They were also one of the first stores in the region to implement a loyalty card system – now boasting over 10,000 active loyalty customers.
Building on their ongoing success, a youth-targeted store, Rhino Rage, was opened in 1997.
After purchasing the adjourning middle-block building in 1996, the business undertook the task of renovating both stores – putting in atriums and a lift.
Since 2007, Rhino Rage and Ron Dall have operated side-by-side within the same building.
Mr Dalla says the innovation extends into the stores themselves. He has also moved to implement solar panels across both stores, bringing huge savings in electricity prices.
“I believe in constant, small change. You have to be constantly looking at what’s new and what is coming,” he said.
“If we didn’t believe in change, we wouldn’t have a computer system 20 years before others.”