New Member Series: Inside JLS Group, one team, full lifecycle

From new Large Format Retail stores and national rollout programs to ongoing maintenance across multi-site portfolios, JLS Group works behind the scenes supporting some of Australia’s best-known retailers and fitness operators.

JLS Group works across retail and commercial spaces, delivering the construction, rollouts, and facilities services that keep client assets open, safe, and operating as intended.

JLS Group ANZ operates through three divisions that cover the full life of a retail or commercial space.

JL Shopfit delivers the big builds: new stores, flagship refurbishments, and design and construct programs ranging from $200,000 to $15 million.  Rapid Retail Response (RRR) handles the fast-turnaround work that happens once a site is trading: rollouts, campaign installs, shop-in-shops, and minor works delivered in hours or days, not months. Rapid Facilities Response (RFR) keeps sites running once they’re live, managing maintenance and compliance through JAZZ, the group’s own facilities management platform.

The logic is simple. Shopfit builds it, RRR adapts it, RFR maintains it. Most providers in this market do one of those things well. Very few do all three, and fewer still do them as one connected team rather than three separate businesses competing for the same client’s attention.

That range is reflected in the breadth of JLS Group’s partnerships. Across the Large Format Retail sector, the business has worked with brands including Rebel, Supercheap Auto, BCF and Planet Fitness, while its broader retail portfolio includes major retailers operating across major retail centres, airports and other commercial environments.

The relationship with Super Retail Group across a multitude of projects for all brands within the SRG portfolio in Australia and New Zealand is a good example of what full-lifecycle support looks like in practice. Across Rebel, Supercheap Auto, BCF, and Macpac, JLS Group has delivered work spanning fitout, store rollouts, and facilities support, giving one of Australia’s largest listed retail groups a single partner who understands how those four brands operate at store level.

JLS Group was also engaged to deliver the Harvey Norman Commercial showroom in Port Melbourne, Victoria, working with a range of global luxury brands to deliver the new space.

Planet Fitness is another long-standing relationship built the same way, with JLS Group supporting the lifestyle club’s physical footprint as it has grown across the country.

That’s the pattern the business is built around. A client who uses one division is treated as a JLS Group client, not a JL Shopfit client or an RRR client. The team’s job is to spot the next need before the client has to raise it: the store that’s about to open and will need ongoing maintenance, the maintenance contract that surfaces a refurbishment opportunity. It’s a simple idea that a lot of construction and facilities businesses talk about and few actually operate.

JLS Group has recently joined the Large Format Retail Association, a decision Managing Director Andrew Shelton sees as a natural next step.

“We have many clients who sit inside the Large Format Retail sector including Rebel, Supercheap Auto, BCF, Planet Fitness. Being part of the LFRA puts us in the room with the people setting the agenda for that sector, not just responding to it,” Mr Shelton said.

“It sharpens our thinking, keeps us close to where retail property is heading, and puts us in front of the operators and landlords who are exactly who we’re built for.”

Founded in the 2000s as a specialist retail fitout business, JLS Group added RRR in 2020 to handle the live-environment work retailers increasingly needed, then formalised RFR as a standalone facilities division in 2023, built around the JAZZ platform.

In 2025, parent company Johns Lyng Group was acquired by Pacific Equity Partners, one of Australia’s largest private equity firms, giving JLS Group access to the scale, trade network, and capital of a much larger organisation while keeping the hands-on, accountable way it has always worked with clients.

For Large Format Retailers managing complex and multi-site portfolios, that one team is increasingly valuable.

 

*Image caption: Harvey Norman Commercial showroom in Port Melbourne (VIC), delivered by JLS Group