The recruits include Brenton Ang, who joins Mavi in the role of brand manager from Lee, where he was NSW sales manager; and Erin Quinn, who worked for Rip Curl as NSW major accounts manager and will now take on the position of Mavi account manager.
The team will be led by sales manager Tim Grainger, former chief executive and business development director at Bleach, parent company of denim brands Ksubi, Insight and Something Else.
Mavi Jeans Australia, which has 235 stockists across Australia and New Zealand, is also set to a launch a new advertising and marketing campaign on April 1, which will see its advertising become more product driven. The advertising tagline will switch from “Meet the Mavis” to “Who’s your Mavi”, and the Mavi website and imagery will be updated accordingly. Mavi managing director Paul Hootman, said the revamp was the natural next step for the brand.
“The 2010 'Meet the Mavis' campaign was very successful, but this year, we want to change the focus a little to highlight the fit of the jeans and the new campaign will relate fit to demographic, and body type,” he said. “We never really had a profile in the market, almost no advertising whatsoever, so this is all part of progression for the brand. It's all about brand awareness, educating people about the Mavi label and consolidating our position in the retail space.”
Hootman said the campaign will most likely roll out via in-store promotion initially with advertising to also appear on the new Mavi website. The Mavi business has also restructured to direct most manufacturing back to its parent company in Turkey, with a strong focus on Turkish origin product. Hootman said the company decided to make the shift after a “brief dalliance with Vietnam and the far east” which didn't deliver the quality or speed that was needed to service the current Mavi stock replenishment model.
“We have restructured to reflect the reliance back to the parent company’s manufacturing plant and with the addition of the new sales team, this will allow us to fully focus on being a sales and marketing business again without having to worry about the production side of things,” he said.
Daniela Aroche