A raft of head office changes and a 43 per cent year-on-year sales growth have paved the way for Cooper St to open its first retail store.
Head designer of the young womenswear label, Alicia Arcuri, revealed the 21-year-old company will open a 55 square metre store in Westfield Bondi Junction by Christmas.
Arcuri, who has a financial stake in the new retail arm of the business, will oversee the day to day operations of the store alongside Cooper St financial controller Charlie Lethbridge.
Founder and director of the label Craig Cooper originally dismissed retail as “the easiest way to go broke”, Arcuri said. But conditions that prevailed throughout 2009 appear to have helped change his mind.
“We’ve had obviously a fairly decent year and I guess that he [Cooper] got some confidence back in the brand and back in the team that we’ve got here in design, because we did have a big changeover,” Arcuri said. “Suddenly he gave us the green light.”
The ‘big changeover’ was a slate of staff changes at the close of 2008. Both Cooper and Arcuri have been tight-lipped about the overhaul, with Arcuri saying only that it was “out with the old and in with the new”.
The designer added that the investment in retail will not change anything for the label’s 350 current stockists.
“It’s not something that we want to flog, because we do have a really broad customer base. We are in both big department stores here. At the same time ... we just get so many phone calls from our website for people looking for different things and sometimes it can be really difficult to track one down. We figure [it will help] if there’s a one stop place that you can get all those little odd bits.”
Further store openings will depend upon the success of its first store, Arcuri said. “Ideally it’d be like a flagship store in each state across Australia.”
Arcuri revealed the “luxe” tone that will infuse the new store fit-out was part of a broader revamp that she has been working to implement since her appointment as head designer in 2008.
“Myself and the other two girls in design are keen to make it more of a trend, a fashion label,” she said.
“In the past we’ve been a little bit predictable. We do a great fitting pair of pants for work but we want to be more than that”.
Erin O’Loughlin