Finnish design house Marimekko is set to cement its local presence with the launch of its first company-owned stores in Australia.
While the company, which manufactures apparel, bags, textiles and homewares, has been selling its products in Australia since the 1960s, it has today opened its first Melbourne flagship store on Chapel Street, following the launch of the first-ever Australian Marimekko store in the Sydney CBD last week.
The stores, which are based on the same concept as the several new stores opened in recent years, will stock all of Marimekko’s product lines and follows a pattern for the company in recent years of strong investment in international expansion.
In addition, Marimekko president and CEO Mika Ihamuotila said that Australia has been somehow isolated as a market for a long time and while many other foreign brands have chosen to enter the market via department store tie-ups and speciality dealers as their distribution channel, Marimekko is among the first foreign brands in its category to be building a chain of its own retail stores in Australia.
“Our expansion in Australia seems to me a very natural step. The strongest focus of growth in the global consumer market has shifted from the Atlantic and Europe to the Pacific region. It is partly for this reason that we have invested in this region particularly much in recent years. New Marimekko stores have been opened in Japan, South Korea and Hong Kong,” he said.
“Positive and easy-going Australians like Marimekko’s playfulness and colour. This is why I believe our new stores will do well. My assessment is also backed by our long roots in this market and the increased interest in Marimekko shown recently by the local media.
"The stores being opened in Sydney and Melbourne will be Marimekko’s first in the southern hemisphere. This naturally means that we will have to take geographical facts into account in our design more broadly than before, which will also facilitate accessing other markets in the southern hemisphere later on.”
Ihamuotila added that the company’s long-term aim in Australia is to expand distribution further through high-class speciality dealers and department stores and to open new Marimekko stores, both company-owned and retailer-owned. A subsidiary was set up in Australia early this year and the local team will be in charge of expanding distribution.