The World Is Omni

The Verdict

The World Is Omni was born from hip hop crew Omni Potent and their merch which, during the Covid lockdowns, they quickly realised they needed an in-person space to sell. They ended up finding that in St Kevin's Arcade, and quickly moved into selling streetwear on consignment, too, until the 2021 lockown put a pin in things. After that, they popped up regularly in Ponsonby Central up until 2024, growing a fairly cult following in Tāmaki Makaurau, and finally landed here at 168 Ponsonby Road in the former Honeymoon Ave space, operating as both a store and a coffee and matcha shop. 

That's the simple story, though. In reality, owner Jordan Hurdle's (or LUCA, in the music world) route into setting up The World Is Omni started when he left school at 16 and started working at Recycle Boutique on High Street, and then two years later moving to Hype DC in one of their first stores in Auckland. "At Recycle I learnt how to deal with customers and how consignment works," Hurdle tells me. "At Hype, I learnt about sales tactics and how big corporates work." 

Then, he moved on to Parlour which while now sadly closed was, at its peak, one of Auckland's coolest spots for curated, select vintage pieces. "The only reason I left was because of Covid," Hurdle explains. "He didn't have work for me." It was, like so many of these stories, that moment that ended up being the first domino to fall and eventually lead to the opening of the store. He spent that time offered by the lockdowns working on merch for Omni Potent and the rest, they say, is history. 

You could take Hurdle's story even further back though. His interest in streetwear came from being a skater in intermediate school. "I started skating in year seven, and that's when I was exposed to the fashion," he explains. "It's all about being fresh, you know? It's all about whose got the dopest pieces and what brands, but it's not in an egotistical way, it's just so you can look good and get it for a steal and then sell it for more." He tells me about being a kid and putting together his money to buy sneakers and then looking after them like they were genuinely precious pieces. "I used to clean my shoes, since I was 12. I'd always be making sure that shit was fresh because I knew I'd be able to resell it." 

That's partly the idea behind The World Is Omni. There aren't many other places in Auckland where consignment fashion is purely focused on menswear, so that's part of the store's point of difference. But it's also about leaning on this generation's genuine love for resale and the circular lifecycle of fashion. "A lot of people our age want to shop second hand, you know? It's better for the environment, better for your pocket," Hurdle explains. "We try and offer a better consignment rate than other stores because it's also about giving those consigners a bit more bang for their buck for their precious items." Alongside clothes, they're also selling vintage records and an insane selection of 90s and noughties toys. 

Talking to Hurdle it feels unsurprising that with the opening of this permanent space he's sought to create so much more than just a shop. It feels like, for him, it's genuinely about a fostering a community for this culture that has offered him and so many other young people a real sense of belonging. And then there is, of course, the fact that the The World Is Omni was opening in a space that became pretty formative for Auckland's matcha scene. "I used to come here for Honeymoon Ave's banana bread matcha, so I was gutted when they closed down," Hurdle tells me. "So we wanted to do the most with our matcha drinks, making sure it's ceremonial grade, and trying to do our little flip on it and of course continue the banana bread flavour that I came to Honeymoon Ave for." 

There's also great coffee, vinyl tunes, and, as Hurdle himself says, "one of the best views in the city." The World Is Omni is a retail space, but it's also a coffee and matcha shop in one of the few blocks of Ponsonby Road that doesn't have that, a consignment store trying to be the place that Hurdle would have loved to have sold through when he was younger, and a destination for people finding their indentity through skate and streetwear to come together. "We really just do this shit for the love of selling cool clothes," he finishes. "We're just retailers that love streetwear."