Kevin Moore is smitten with Smiggle. The Australian stationery retailer is making serious inroads into overseas markets and is about to open its first London store.
“Love it. Love it. That will be our next global brand,” Moore says.
“So Smiggle are in Singapore and Mark McInnes and Solomon Lew [chief executive and chairman, respectively of Smiggle’s parent company Premier Investments] said they are going into Europe this year – they will nail it.
“There is next to nobody else in the world that has a 12-year-old as their target shopper and that target shopper wants to go into the store to meet other 12-year-olds and talk to the staff, to explain what they’ve done with the stationery they’ve bought.”
Moore says Smiggle’s young customers have been spreading the brand’s message on social media for years, doing a lot of the heavy lifting for its marketing department.
“Their shoppers have been communicating online about what they’ve bought, on Facebook and other forms of social media for five years. It’s an incredible brand.”
Smiggle’s bright shapes are a world away from the retro classic design of Deus. But both retailers know how to develop rapport with the customers.
Monroe says the connection between Deus and its community is strong because the communication is largely unmediated, with much of its content sourced in-house.
“We make it ourselves, which is why our content is so rich. We’re not engaging a third-party to come up with a video or idea on how to connect with our digital fans.”
To paraphrase Mark Twain, rumours of the retail store’s death have been greatly exaggerated.
For Deus, its six flagship stores across the world – in Sydney, Byron Bay, Los Angeles, Milan and two in Bali – are central to its omni-channel offering. Monroe says the stores exemplify the brand’s message: “The stores are unique. They’re not just retail.”
“Camperdown [the Sydney flagship store] was the incubator, the office, it was the back-end, the front of house, the workshop that built the motorbikes that ended up online and connecting us with interested parties overseas that then spawned places like Bali, LA and Milan.”
Monroe says the sensory aspect of the Deus store experience helped to break the brand in the US: “For Americans to take a brand seriously that wasn’t from their shores, they needed to be able to see it, smell it, touch it.”
Henry Bucks has recently moved into new premises in Adelaide and is now undertaking a major refurbishment of its flagship Collins St store in Melbourne.
For Cecil, playing to Henry Bucks’ strengths makes sense in a tough retail environment.
“It’s a difficult time in general for retail. It’s very competitive out there; consumer confidence is not very high. You’ve got to try harder these days to cut through and to offer something to somebody that they see the value in,” he says.
Creating a ‘destination’ store has given bricks-and-mortar retailers a strong point of difference from pure-play online retailers.
Moore says retailers who get store layout, fit-out right and service right can gain an edge on their online competition.
He says retail guru Howard Saunders has identified a “me-centric” trend in consumer behaviour, which links social media sharing with the customer’s desire for novel experiences, such as a visually stunning or quirky store.
“It’s the power of that experience. ASOS hasn’t got that. Amazon hasn’t got that. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve got great service, great selection and good prices, but they have yet to be able to touch a shopper inside a store,” Moore says.
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