Te Puke businesses are revamping their stores to create a more enticing shopping destination before the completion of Tauranga Eastern Link, which will bypass the town.

Te Puke Economic Development Group's managing director Mark Boyle says in the last two months seven retailers have either created new branding, shop fronts and/or, internal fit-outs, signalling businesses are readying themselves for a traffic change in the township.

Te Puke Florist owner Murray Howell outside his newly renovated shop front.

'This is proactive retailers wanting to be part of the future and doing things to lift their business by making themselves attractive and being part of Te Puke EDG's over-arching strategy for growth and development.

'So the town has got its brain around change – and it's more than just the shop fronts, it's the whole strategy we have underway.”

Te Puke Florist owner Murray Howell, who has re-fitted his shop and helped two nearby businesses re-brand, says the stimulus is TEL.

'We've come up with a new look, made it a bit more modern by making everything in the shop black…which pops all of our colours.

'We knew, with the bypass coming up soon, we had to get ourselves geared up and keep people interested in Te Puke, so we've been smartening our shop up – and it's giving us a good feeling and other people a good feeling.

'We're getting lots of good response from people saying: ‘My God, we've never seen anything like this in Te Puke before' and it's making people feel good about coming into a nice shop,” says Murray.

Mark says while some Te Puke stores are in good shape, others need work – and with less than 750 days until TEL opens, changing traffic patterns through Te Puke will follow.

'Currently, there are 20-odd thousand vehicles a day; and they're [NZTA] not predicting it's going to be so much less, but the expectation is there will be diversion of heavy traffic.

'There will be a change in the pattern of the traffic, but we can't predict what will happen.”