Torpedo7 Brand Guidelines: A 2004 Hamilton Web Shop, The Warehouse Years and Tahua

Mountain-bike gear sold online from the Waikato.

Torpedo7 began in 2004 in Hamilton, New Zealand, as an online shop. RNZ reported in 2014 that it started out selling mountain-bike gear, and RNZ described it again in October 2025 as founded by Luke Howard-Willis in Hamilton as an online retailer of outdoor equipment. English Wikipedia describes him as a mountain-bike enthusiast and names his father, Guy Howard-Willis, as a co-founder. For its first ten years Torpedo7 traded online only; when it opened its first shops in 2014, RNZ reported the move as the business taking its online adventure-sports retailing into bricks and mortar.

The Warehouse Group, owner of The Warehouse discount stores, Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming, bought into Torpedo7 in 2013. RNZ dated the purchase to April 2013, and English Wikipedia, citing The New Zealand Herald of March 2013, describes it as a 51 per cent stake; the group later took full ownership, RNZ reported in 2025. English Wikipedia says that despite this ownership Torpedo7 operated as an independent business, with the online stores it ran at the time including the daily-deals site 1-day and Number One Fitness, which sold exercise equipment.

In December 2013 The Warehouse Group also bought R&R Sport, a chain that RNZ said began in Dunedin in 1981 as a second-hand sports-gear store and had moved to selling mostly new products by 1990. English Wikipedia gives its original name as Recycled Recreation. The two purchases, one an online business and one a chain of shops, were the pieces that The Warehouse Group would put together the following year.

From web shop to large stores.

The two businesses were combined in October 2014. RNZ reported that The Warehouse was rebranding seven R&R Sport stores as Torpedo7 and opening two new ones: a 2,300-square-metre shop opposite the Sylvia Park shopping centre in Mount Wellington, Auckland, and another in Albany. The website was revamped and rebranded at the same time, and RNZ named Icebreaker, Trek and Quiksilver among the brands the chain would stock. English Wikipedia says the current Torpedo7 logo has been in use since 2014, the year of that move into shops.

Under The Warehouse Group the chain kept growing. The New Zealand Herald reported in May 2018 that Torpedo7, once an online-only operation, was being run by the Noel Leeming/Torpedo7 management team, had refreshed its Albany store and was preparing more shops; an analyst quoted in the same report linked the performance of its physical stores to a renewed interest in cycling. English Wikipedia, citing The Warehouse Group’s 2022 annual report, gives 24 stores in 2022.

In February 2024 The Warehouse Group announced the sale of Torpedo7 to Tahua Partners, an Auckland-based retail and hospitality investor whose businesses RNZ listed as including the New Zealand operations of Starbucks and Burger King and the shoe chains Hannahs and Number One Shoes. 1News reported that Tahua would take the stock, the cash in store and the Torpedo7 brand, and take on the leases, gift cards, online orders and customer returns; RNZ reported that most of the permanent staff would be offered jobs with the new owner. The Warehouse Group’s chief executive said the group would put its attention on The Warehouse, Warehouse Stationery and Noel Leeming, and cited a global decline in the bike market among the chain’s difficulties. RNZ confirmed in October 2025 that Tahua had bought Torpedo7 from The Warehouse Group in February 2024.

How sporting-goods chains present themselves.

Sporting-goods chains across the Americas, Asia and Oceania tend to present themselves through a few constant elements: a short name on the shop sign, a single strong colour carried from the storefront to the advertising, and a logo set in heavy or slanted capitals. In the United States, Big 5 Sporting Goods uses white capitals on a blue field and Dunham’s Sports a slanted red wordmark, as their logo files on Wikimedia Commons show. The guides in this group look at chains in the United States, Mexico, Argentina, the Philippines, Thailand, New Zealand, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, and describe each sign, logo and colour scheme as the company itself publishes it.

Store formats range from small neighbourhood shops to large units in regional malls. Big 5’s stores averaged about 10,000 square feet in 1997, the Los Angeles Times reported, while Dunham’s has taken mall and plaza units, including former department-store spaces, according to SGB Media. Shop counts in these guides are always given with the date and the source that reported them.

Ownership takes several forms. Some chains have stayed in founding families or passed to private owners; some have been listed on a stock exchange and later taken private, as Big 5 was in October 2025; others sit inside larger retail or department-store groups. Each guide states the owner as a dated source gives it, and says plainly when a business has been sold, merged or closed.

Many chains also sell ranges under their own names alongside branded goods, and publish corporate pages about their founders and owners. Each guide separates what a company says about itself from what independent, dated sources record, and treats the palette shown as an unofficial interpretation rather than an official brand colour.

From Torpedo7 shops to an off-price chain.

Under Tahua the shops changed name. Inside Retail New Zealand reported on 2 June 2025 that Tahua had closed the Torpedo7 stores in Rotorua and Westgate and that the first ten stores of a new off-price chain, The Outlet, were opening that day in former Torpedo7 locations from Whangarei to Dunedin, with Hamilton, Tauranga and Christchurch among them. The Outlet sells end-of-season and overstock clothing, footwear and gear from outside brands, the magazine reported. RNZ reported in October 2025 that Tahua had announced the conversion of the six remaining Torpedo7 stores into The Outlet stores and that Torpedo7 would carry on as a digital-only brand focused on premium outdoor products.

As of November 2026, the Torpedo7 website’s home page carries the title “Now Available at The Outlet” and says that Torpedo7 gear, including camping, bike and snow gear, is now sold through The Outlet. Its footer links to a page headed “Moving to The Outlet” and to the other Tahua Group retailers. On its own website, then, Torpedo7 is now a brand inside Tahua Group’s retail business, sold through The Outlet rather than through shops of its own.

The identity has had to work in three settings in two decades: a web shop, a chain of large stores and, most recently, a brand sold inside another retailer. The name is unusual for a sports shop. It joins a word and a numeral with no space, and it was in use online for ten years before the business had any shop sign. The logo that English Wikipedia dates to 2014 arrived with the move into stores, when the name first had to work on a building as well as a screen.

For a design guide, Torpedo7 shows how a retail name born online can carry a chain of stores for a decade and then return to a narrower role under a new owner, without the name itself changing. Compare Anaconda, an Australian outdoor chain with large stores, and rebel, an Australian sports chain. For this guide we use fern green, snowline and a trail orange with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Torpedo7’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.