Josh McDonnnell spoke with RCG Co-CEO Daniel Agostinelli about the growing market share of the Skechers brand here in Australia.
Earlier this year, Skechers launched its flagship store in Pitt Street, Sydney. Agostinelli said that since the store opened its doors, sales are performing 40% above conservative estimates.
Where are the key performing stores? Are they the same level as Pitt Street?
Well, they are certainly not 40% up but most of them are up on our expectations. It's like every other retailer, we put a number down and say we think we can do this number and we can afford to pay this amount of rent.
We then open the stores and in many, many cases, we are outperforming the numbers that we had originally thought the stores could do.
And where are these stores mainly?
Well if you go to Chadstone we've got a big double entry store which is 160 odd square metres. It's very very strong. We just opened a smaller format store in Burwood, Sydney. It's performing exceptionally well.
We're expanding the model in NZ as well.
What I'm saying is we now have 66 stores between Australia and NZ and we believe we can easily get to 100+ stores around the country.
In what matter of time?
Well we have no real hurry and no real set timing. It's a matter of when the right opportunities arrive from a rental point of view and people and structure.
We are certainly not talking ten years, we are talking a couple of years.
How will you compete with the internationals also entering the market?
Well first and foremost we are the principal of the brand, so we need to revise, we certainly won't be supplying direct.
Depending on what the commercials look like and how things look forward, we may look to do a deal with the marketplace model, which allows us to put our site on their site. But none of that is on the cards at the moment.
Is there a strong eCommerce focus going forward?
Absolutely. In our view, we have one of the best online teams in the market. We've really poured some investment there and the benefits we are getting there are terrific.
We couldn't be any happier. We've only recently launched the Skechers site in AU and so far the numbers are outperforming our expectations that's for sure.
Once again, having said that, we don't see online as the doom and gloom. We see it as the next chapter in what the consumers expect from us, from a customer service point of view.
You simply have to offer both and we are certainly not pulling back any investment in our stores or what they look like or what we spend on each fitout. We are moving forward at the same gear.
When did online launch?
We launched online in November of last year.
And since then what share of sales is it taking up?
What I can say is that it is our number one store.
Skechers online is number 1?
It's on its way. As a MAT for the year, it'll become our number one store.
How does it compare to the rest of the RCG brands, if you had to place them on a ladder?
Absolutely at the top end of it, we have a fairly big wholesale business that we supply. We have some great partners, Myer, David Jones and the Fusion Group to name a few.
Because we are a family footwear store we have up around 600 touch points across the country, including our stores. We supply anyone who is in that family footwear space, so it is definitely the top of our tree.