The founder of a giant homeware and furniture store opening in west Auckland hopes to expand the business to other New Zealand cities.

Kiwi businessman Vinod Kumar plans to open the world's first Nido store at 158 Central Park Drive, Henderson by Spring, with work already well underway.

If the store proved successful Vinod says he planned to expand it to Tauranga, Christchurch and maybe even Australia, where the company had already been registered.

The 27,000-square-metre store, being built on the 31,300sqm west Auckland site, will be up to eight stories high in parts, have two levels of carparking, employ 200 staff and cost $60 million to build.

Of the 27,000sqm, about 5000sqm would be for warehouse storage featuring 20 metre high shelving.

Vinod says he wanted technology to play an important role in the store and the goal was for stock to be collected from shelving using an automated machine.

He also wanted to introduce a night shopping experience where customers could browse products from home and talk to retail staff using a live video stream, he says.

"What we want to do is create midnight shopping away from shopping so you can shop from home till midnight like you're in the shop," Vinod says.

"If people can't come we'll take the shop to them."

Nido would specialise in flatpack panel furniture that shoppers could order in custom sizes. It would also have an installation arm to its business.

Nido, which meant "nest" in Italian, would be targeted at people who wanted to make the best use of space in their homes, particularly those who lived in more compact living situations, he said.

The store would carry more than 10,000 product lines, featuring 80 "exclusive brands" mostly from Europe, and include 100 showrooms with videos of how to set up, says Vinod.

He says it would be the largest retail store ever seen in New Zealand.

The announcement of Nido's opening came just two weeks after Swedish-founded multinational retail giant Ikea announced it was planning to open a store in Auckland within the next few years.

An Auckland Council spokeswoman says it had not yet received a resource consent application from Ikea.

Nido was similar to Ikea in that it would sell flatpack furniture and homeware and feature in store room displays, but that was where similarities would end, Nido says.

"Ikea actually have their own designed products. We're not going to manufacture anything ourselves like they do.

"We're going to be talking to lots of suppliers and pick the best from all the suppliers and bring that to the public."

Some of the furniture would not require tools to be assembled, he says.

Nido furniture would include such items and floor to ceiling wardrobes and kitchen cabinetry.

"We can give you a $5000 or even $50,000 kitchen."

Vinod bought his first Mitre 10 in 1989 and was instrumental in the development of the Mitre 10 Mega concept, at one point owning three Mitre 10 at once.

The former engineer built the Henderson Mitre 10 Mega, not far from where Nido is being built, and sold it in February 2018.

Nido will offer online shopping at www.nidoliving.co.nz before the physical store opens.

The company will be 100 per cent New Zealand owned and operated, with commercial property investment group Maat Group funding the business.

-Stuff.co.nz/John Anthony