Chief executive of luxury brand house Club 21 Australia, Nigel Yeo, said sales in Mulberry's Westfield Sydney store in the four months from December 2010 have been “off the chart”.
“It's a good problem to have but it's completely taken us by surprise... We've had to scramble to try to manage that,” Yeo said.
He put the success of the label down to its “worldwide momentum”.
“In every single market around the world that [Club 21 Global] has Mulberry, it has performed extremely well over the last two years,” he said.
Unexpected was the domestic demand for the English label, with the proportion of Australian to tourist customers at 50:50, he said.
“In Sydney we expected tourists to be at least 70 per cent of our business but it's a good sign that it's 50:50. It means we can build a domestic market; we don't have to depend on the different tourist patterns throughout the whole of the 12- month period.”
Also a surprise was the demand for Mulberry's fashion product over its 'bread and butter' designs. “The bags with different colours, bright colours – typically you wouldn't expect those to sell out first but that was the case for us,” Yeo said.
He revealed Club 21 has subsequently tweaked its three-year plan for Mulberry.
“We continue to make conservative but more ambitious projections for the rest of this year and for the next two years, just to make sure that we secure more stock.”
No additional Mulberry store openings are planned until 2012, however.
“It's not a question of whether the business will do well, we know it will do well,” Yeo said. “It's more an issue of availability of space in the locations that we want Mulberry to be in.”
As the CEO behind Club 21's multiple fashion brands including CK Calvin Klein, DKNY Jeans and Armani Exchange, Yeo conceded 2011 was proving “very challenging” in a broader retail sense.
“I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the second half of this year will be better, but at the same time I'm also aware that's when interest rates are expected to go even higher.”
Club 21 Australia's next major campaign will be the celebration of Armani Exchange's 20th birthday, scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2011.
Erin O'Loughlin