Michael Hill CEO Daniel Bracken discusses the strategy behind the business' demi-fine jewellery brand, Medley.
Medley is not going to have a huge, above-the-line marketing investment; it's very much going to be an influencer strategy – a social strategy – to drive brand awareness.
It's built on the principles of building an essentials wardrobe and your ability to curate that wardrobe however you want to wear it. So there is absolutely a fashion element to it and there's also a strong focus on great staple pieces.
But more importantly it's built on the philosophy that you can mix and match it and personalise how you want to wear it – and that's very much how we've gone to market.
At this point the brand is only available on its website in Australia.
We deliberately haven't gone into other core markets because we're in our sandpit phase with it.
We're playing with it, we're understanding the price and product architecture; have we got the pricing and range right? Is the end-to-end backend systems and customer experience how we want it to be? Are we working with the right influencers? How are we building and developing the reach we want to? What sort of marketing investment do we want to put behind this?
We're gradually building the brand's right to play.
The brand has to justify the investment that we're gradually going to put behind it.
At this point it's a small startup. We've got two or three dedicated resources to it.
We have been leveraging Michael Hill resources an know-how very quietly in the background. We're not trying to tie it to Michael Hill, we're trying to let it grow and blossom on its own for what it is.
When we do our first half results in February will probably do an announcement of a clear road map for what we plan to do with it but at this point we're very much testing and learning and enjoying acquiring new customers, that in time could well join the Michael Hill family as they grow in their own lives.
