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As Simon Burrett led a store tour of Harris Scarfe’s rejuvenated flagship store in Rundle Place, Adelaide, no stone was left unturned.
The Harris Scarfe marketing executive motioned to wide, spacious aisles, carefully curated racks of clothing and clean, bright lights heralding a new era for the retailer.
With its foundations dating back to 1849, reinventing Harris Scarfe will be no easy feat.
Spearheading the rebirth is its partnership with UK department store Debenhams, facilitated by parent company Pepkor.
Since the deal was brokered last year, the retailer has flagged a phased approach to introducing Debenhams' collections in-store, however Burrett finally unravels the details.
“Today there is Rundle Place in Adelaide, Carindale in Queensland and then another four in Victoria, so that’s the six for this first batch and then there’s another seven coming in February with quite a few coming to Adelaide; at least three of the seven are in Adelaide which sort of rounds out our offering in Adelaide.”
By Burrett's side is ex-Myer executive Nicole Naccarella. As general manager of fashion, she has overhauled Harris Scarfe’s apparel offer.
“The customer was telling us that we were daggy, old, boring, we’re hard to shop, we’re expensive and we started really listening to what they were saying and also giving brands definition.
“So I culled a lot of brands when I came in to make sure the brands actually stood for something; they actually resonate with the target customer for each brand.
“We do a lot of market scoping to make sure that we’re really, really well priced in the market. Across the board all of our prices have come down by about $10 on average from last year.”
Burrett reveals his team has also been tapping into a goldmine of resources provided by Pepkor.
“The global design practice that we have within Pepkor is like our own WGSN.
“So a lady called Samantha Jones runs that – 42 designers all across the world with the latest trends but also the latest designs helping us understand what are going to be the looks, the cuts and the fabrics.
“I know that’s something Nicole has really tapped into and been really impressed with.
“That’s the kind of resource that Pepkor makes available for us, as well as just the capital backing.”
Paired with customer feedback complied by Harris Scarfe's executive team, Naccarella has actioned major changes to its fashion offering.
“Our ranges go up to generally a 16 and the collections that are in-store at the moment go up to a 16, sometimes an 18 but we are going to push it up to a 20 for next summer.”
“We want to be accessible to mainstream Australia which is the biggest customer base.
“We don’t want to be too young which is where a lot of our hemlines have been too short and the fits have been quite small and tight so we’ve redone all of our fits, our hemlines are below the knee because our customer is a more classic lady and just listening to what she’s saying.”
Naccarella also says that the team has ditched fitting clothing on mannequins and now employs live models averaging a size 10-12 so as to cater to realistic sizing for women.
“We fit them on an actual girl who is sort of an 11, she’s not an 8, she’s a real girl.
“Everything we fit, we fit on her and make sure we’re happy with how she looks in all of our clothes because she is our target customer.”
While Pepkor has given Harris Scarfe access to top drawer resources and Debenhams has rolled in as an exclusive brand within the department store, both Burrett and Naccarella focus on one of the most critical components of successful retail – visual merchandising.
Burrett flags three pillars in its VM strategy that have bolstered Harris Scarfe's new trajectory.
“So there’s the hardware, the strategy, if you like, and then the human capital - they’re the three components to really pulling it off.”
“There’s been a lot of parts to that, so firstly there’s been an 18 month journey of just understanding what our customer sees as their basic needs.
“One part of it has been in terms of store navigation and general store appearance, so we have our new concept store which we’ve got quite a lot of on the ground – that’s now much fresher, wider aisles, brighter, much easier to navigate.
“From a conceptual side it was a matter of, “how do we build the model so that works?”
“Then there’s the skill set and discipline side and that’s a journey that continues.
“We now have new leadership in our VM space and we have a highly credentialed person from the industry who’s just arrived now and we have more people in the business who are VM specialists and our champions at every store.”
Naccarella adds to this by revealing the department store has poached global talent to enhance its VM strategy.
“I sort of stood back and thought well if we’re bringing Debenhams in and they’re going to be in their own beautiful fit-outs we can’t have our brands looking and being merchandised the way we’ve historically done it, so we now have a VM manager that has just joined us a couple of weeks ago and there’s also a VM team out from the UK that work with us so we’re constantly upgrading all stores to this level.
“I think that’s important – you can’t sell something to a woman if it’s just on a rack.”
Burrett is confident about what's next for Harris Scarfe and even says that the business is scouting sites in Sydney CBD, beyond its existing stores in Campbelltown and Blacktown.
“We’re actually looking to open more stores. We’ve got two stores at the moment that don’t do apparel and there's opportunity for us is to get into that Sydney base and really look at getting shops in that location.”
Naccarella says Harris Scarfe’s rejuvenation has helped enlist new brand recruits, such as David Lawrence.
“I was talking to them for a while, we needed to take them in the journey as well because I think if they had looked at our stores historically they would have said this isn’t the right place for us.
“Simon and I were able to take them on the journey – what we’re going to look like down the track, what our stores are going to look like, what our type of customer is and now we’re very excited and it gives them another opportunity.”