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Assia Benmedjdoub uncovers a strategic new direction at Strandbags.

In the time it takes Felicity McGahan to pull out her wallet, the odds are she’s already sold one.

It was 16 months ago that McGahan took over the helm of Strandbags, a heritage retailer dating back to 1927.

Privately owned and under the radar, she was taken aback by the numbers.

Strandbags sells one wallet every six seconds. A handbag every five. And a suitcase every 12.

“It’s not often you meet the CEO and you’re like, ‘Wow, you’re not tired and exhausted’,” McGahan laughs.

“It is a very successful business so it was important for me to come in and learn what was working because it wasn’t broken.

“My job now is to elevate the customer experience and digitisation of the business.”

McGahan refers to her first six months at the company as the ‘Discovery Phase’, mining insights from its database of three million customers.

Within nine months, she had presented her vision to owner Michael Lewis of South African based retailer The Foschini Group.

Lewis and the board signed off.

“Then we went into the design concept and development,” she continues. “The brand platform was the first piece we came back with: it was a vision to create the world’s most loved destination for the perfect bag.”

Design agency Frost Collective was appointed to refresh the heritage retailer, followed by a new store design rollout and the unveiling of its Chadstone mega-store.

While the retailer has 300 sites across Australia, its Chadstone flagship measures three times the standard footprint with digital screens and a full-service model.

“We know that customers hate queueing up so every staff member has hand-held devices allowing people to check out,” McGahan says.

“There’s so much happening in retail right now that’s digital for digital’s sake. We want to make it something that’s going to help the customer.”

Even smaller stores have been fitted with iPads to boost back-end communication and front-end executions.

Strandbags opened 25 new locations this year, with around 50% of those measuring over 200 square metres.

McGahan has also made two new appointments to enhance innovation: store experience director Susanne Greening-Summers and marketing and digital director Caroline Viska.

This has brought up its local head count of 2,000 employees.

“We’ve never invested more capital from stores to people to technology to marketing,” McGahan says. “But we want the business to be around in the future and it’s now future-proofing and moving it forward.

“While it’s great that it’s been successful, we’ve got to stay relevant.”

McGahan now sees opportunity within the travel accessories space, particularly via its Flyline business. While it is already the house of brands for luggage - including American Tourister, Guess and Samsonite - Flyline can push the fashion envelope through new designs.

“Our goal is to go from a luggage business to a travel brand, so we need to have a case for everybody within that,” she explains. “We’re repositioning Flyline at the moment to own that fashion-meets- function space.

“We’re also building on the handbag category focusing on strong performing areas like our leather business.”

Looking forward at the next six months, McGahan says website improvements and product upgrades can also be expected.

“The challenge is just learn and respond. Retail has always been that. It’s an industry where the customer votes every day whether we’re on or off and responding to that.”

Felicity has decades of management experience across retail brands such as GAP and Cotton On.

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