Latterly a sizeable number of giant retail group are showing great interest in opening stores in Australia including Zara, HM, Abercrombie, Victoria’s Secret and Japanese label Uniqlo, which is a good news for Austrilia economy but a threaten to the local retailers, which have to work harder and nicely prepared to keep local purchasers and survive in this battle in near future.
For the past decades,the world brands sometimes made an outstanding victory in Australia retailing business,because they step into the market differently to local outlets. When driving down the street, you could be shocked by the view that local multiple stores belonging to the same brand are hundreds metres close to one another. But the foreign outlets are less interested to create more than one flagship stores.
Considering the overheads-rents, staffing and supervision, in addition to reducing them, flagship stores are now a territory of its own right with larger space and brand characterized decoration,which has been a main line followed by all world retailers so as to meet the apetite of younger generations who has the experience of traveling overseas.
It is kind of clear that Australia is becoming a natural progression for the world labels to launch into Asian market. Take abercormbiefitch for instance, a Japanese retialed renowned for its fast fashion adaptable design in T-shirts and casual wear, who had announced its target to launch Australian in 2009, abercrombie sales has planed its flagship store range all the way from 1,500 square metres to 3,500 square metres. The smaller store will be established as long as the reputation grows wihin following years.
But one of disadvanteges of these flagship stores is for the size of the stores, they aren’t able to offer a dedicated high level service to customers, which inevitably offer smaller retialers an opportunity. In the long term, if the smaller outlets try and follow the conventional, they will see the difficulty. They should focus instead on meeting a targeted market and pay more attention ot their old clients.
Comparing to contend with the robust brands, it is much more wiser and also cheaper to keep the current clients, which is typically ignored. As a smaller retailer, it is simpler to offer customers a personalised service through notifying them by means of email or phone calls with the newest stock updating information and also offering them a chance to preview the new items on shelf.
We have got the reason to belive that economy in Australia is in a healthy state compared against recent economy gloom in other bits of the world and with the inward-bound of more world brands into market,the economy will be stronger and and increasingly close ties with Pacific Rim.