After being present in Australia for more than a decade, Desigual’s Asia Pacific general manager Balázs Krizsanyik said the time has come for the fashion business to take bolder decisions regarding brand building and selecting distribution partners.
Krizsanyik said this strategy has already been fine-tuned and tested in the rest of the world since 2022.
“Desigual has 65 stockists in this region,” Krizsanyik said. “The goal this year is to continue to expand and meet our consumer wherever they shop, both online and in store, hitting major retailers.
“We are focused on our existing customers and expect a strong lift in new partnerships and growth directly connecting to more metro and city areas across the country, as apparel spearheads our growth.”
Krizsanyik said there is also a strong commercial opportunity in Australia regarding handbags and backpacks, with these categories globally surpassing 40 per cent of the brand’s revenue. Desigual is a fashion and accessories brand servicing men, women and kids, with fashion spearheading the mix.
The APAC GM said handbags and backpacks can serve as a perfect entry product for new customers.
“At the same time, delivering the global launches and exclusive collaboration capsules in Australia going forward will definitely bring a lot of excitement,” he said.
“The short term objective is to refresh and grow the list of stockists we have at the moment in the market while continuing to build the digital backbone. For the mid-term, we have an omnichannel go-to-market strategy which will allow us to meet the consumer wherever she wishes: being it online or offline, own retail or selected boutiques.”
Another key focus area for Krizsanyik is localisation, a key challenge for a role that services multiple and culturally different markets across the APAC region.
“I am obsessed with the consumer and the complexities and opportunities that this interconnected world brings to us, elevating each time the need to find a working balance in-between localising and maintaining a consistent brand and product offer,” he said.
“Our Brand DNA is strong enough to support our presence in over 100 countries around the world, however we indeed need to localise it to succeed. We are selling often different products in different channels with a different marketing and content mix in Paris or Barcelona than in Tokyo or Singapore for instance. At the same time our consumers are well-travelled and fluent in social media so that is where the complexity of consistency starts to play a big role.
“Having said that, there is a bright side as well: trends and collaborative efforts might roll on from one market to the other and that is where new opportunities and synergies come into play to build a stronger regional presence, especially when resources are limited.”
Desigual was born in 1984 and has since grown to operate over 300 stores globally, with the company raking in over €350 million (~A$573 million) according to its 2022 sustainability report.