Mahler Trading has opened Australia’s first Edox flagship store in the heart of the Sydney CBD.
Located in the MLC building, the 35-metre store borders a cluster of high-end stores including Bulgari, Hardy Bros, Omega, Louis Vuitton and Cartier.
Mahler Trading director Paul Madziar said planning for the store had been in progress for around 18 months.
“The business model of establishing a flagship store in markets that have a good spread of retailers is unquestionably sound in that it sends the message to both retailers and consumers alike that the brand has muscle and power,” he said.
“In those countries where Edox has such a presence the exposure of the brand name in a high profile CBD setting cannot be bought by newsprint advertising alone.
“For a suburban retailer to have products similar to those in a concept store is seen to be ‘cool’.”
Madziar said he was pleased with the store’s good-sized footprint in a high profile location.
“It does not get much better than where we are located with most of the surrounding shops being almost iconic symbols of luxury predominantly in the jewellery and clothing sectors,” he said.
“The benefit of this manoeuvre is that the store has the opportunity of tapping into the higher end of the consumer base – something that is important when marketing a product range that includes 5- Minute Repeaters and many limited editions.”
He said the store’s initial trading results were very encouraging “particularly when seen against the perceived overall weaker trading conditions being experienced by many jewellery retailers presently”.
The company plans to roll out an Edox flagship store in Brisbane/Gold Coast in the second half of 2010 and another in Melbourne in 2011.