Accent Group CEO Daniel Agostinelli discusses the recent acquisitions the business has made.
Accent has recently secured distribution deals for brands in Australia: Hershcel and Hoka One One – how does this play into the larger growth strategy?
New brands like Hoka and Herschel have been negotiated and welcomed to include into our portfolio purely because they are great standalone brands in their own right.
Hoka is fast growing internationally as is Herschel.
Both will be a great addition to our wholesale arm and indeed to our store base, especially into The Athlete's Foot with Hoka and Platypus/Glue with Herschel.
Both will also be very supported with a growth plan for digital sites.
How do these deals impact the business?
New brands don’t really reduce costs but instead grow the overall sales base and this allows us to also fuel their growth via our store/online channels.
Accent has also announced its $13 million acquisition of Glue Store and NAL – how does this align with the growth strategy?
The Glue acquisition is very exciting, It has a great name with consumers and already has a very solid sales base together with a great team driving it.
We plan to re-fit, re-fresh and grow the store base numbers whilst at same time allow us to get Accent deeper into the streetwear apparel space given the size of the overall market.
It was an easy decision for us given the core customer is very much similar and complimentary to customers we already know and serve.
Are there any other distribution deals/brands Accent would like to take on that you can discuss?
We are currently not looking at any other distribution brands at present as we feel we have many of the best already in our stable but who knows what may come our way down the line especially now we are moving some parts of our business into apparel.
What’s the business looking forward to for the rest of the year?
The rest of this financial year looks to be solid based on current trading conditions, but this can all change very quickly.
We are very much focused on what we call VVV: VIP, VIRTUAL and VERTICAL.
All in all, given the year we all have just endured, we feel that we are well positioned for sustained, profitable and exciting growth/.