While Tourgelis’s parents, Tass and Christine, expanded into higher value categories, including homewares, furniture and apparel, Tourgelis has put his own stamp on the brand, with a strong focus on design and the recent launch of a private label reusable coffee cup brand, Think Cup. Opus Design is still very much a family business (Tourgelis’s sister Irene has also worked for Opus for the past 15 years) and Tourgelis is very much a hands-on CEO, working the floor every Saturday. He believes this is one of the key reasons the business is still thriving today. Tourgelis said the company plans to mark the anniversary with a large in-store party to thank its customers at the end of October or early November. Inside Retail Weekly: Tell us about the Opus Design store in Paddington, which is not your typical retail storefront. Chris Tourgelis: It’s a 400sqm purpose-built space, which we opened about three years ago. We had been renting premises just five doors away when the store came up for sale. It was an old bank that had a lot of potential but needed a lot of improvement. We kept the facade, which was heritage, and literally knocked the rest down to create the kind of space we always wanted to. We have two levels of retail, so we house our general gifting brands on the ground level and homewares, furniture, fashion and more high-end stuff on the second level, and we have our offices on the top level. It came at a time when I felt that our competition was becoming too safe and, in my eyes, a little bit staid and boring. Rather than fall by the wayside like a lot of our competitors, I wanted to do something that put a stamp on the industry and showed our ambition. I wanted the store to mark a new beginning for the brand. IRW: There seems to be a big focus on creativity and design at Opus Design, where you might wonder whether it’s a design studio or a retail business. Why is creativity important to you? CT: The thing I notice about the homewares and gifting industry at the moment is that it’s controlled largely by people in their 50s and 60s. There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but my team are primarily in their 20s and 30s who are just brimming with ideas and concepts that they want to bring to life, and I want to bring that young energy through. In order to create innovation, I’ve got to keep in mind what the younger generation is doing, what they want and their priorities in life, because we’re trying to attract a younger audience as well. IRW: Do you see Opus as innovating within your industry or retail more broadly? CT: I think we’re innovating in retail. But personally, I don’t look to any other retailers for inspiration, not because they’re not inspiring, but because I’m trying to bring through the true character of what I think Opus is and what we stand for. We’re not here to create 30 stores. We want to make sure we’re big enough to be competitive, but small enough to be agile. We take risks with products all the time, and we create products. We have a design studio and just launched our own reusable cup brand, Think Cup, in Australia and New Zealand. We’re constantly challenging ourselves to find new projects that complement the business but also bring something new to it, so we’re innovating in different ways. When we built the store three years ago, the fitout was very innovative with the use of natural materials. For instance, we used particleboard on the ceilings. We finished it off in such a way that it was very polished looking, but at the end of the day it was still a material that most people would have thrown away. And the way we combine products in terms of visual merchandising is very unique. We don’t follow a particular formula, so we might look a certain way for three to four months, but then we’ll delete lots of brands and bring new ones through, or we’ll bring in a young designer that hasn’t ever had a retail presence before and create something with them. IRW: How is Opus innovating from a retail store perspective? CT: We have done many collaborations. We did one with the Swedish brand Happy Socks, which is one of the market leaders in designer socks. We had someone come in with a special machine to emboss initials on the socks and we were swamped with people. It was actually like a party. That’s just one example. We also recently launched a New Zealand brand called Ashley & Co, where people got to sample the product, and someone from the company was there. It was more like a lifestyle story, and again it was really well attended. I guess what we try to do is bring the real essence of a brand out and get people to engage with it, but not just any brands, the ones that have got that personality and soul. Like retailers, I think a lot of brands are playing it safe and are a bit boring. IRW: A lot of the companies playing it safe are probably doing so because of the challenging landscape. But it’s counterintuitive, because that makes you forgettable and therefore vulnerable… CT: You’ve got to engage with your customers. For instance, I’m here every Saturday, and I get such a kick out of it when the day is busy, the music is playing, customers are having fun and the store fills up. I can’t look at retail just from a financial perspective, where I’m sitting down with my advisers and talking about the week that was. If you’re a commander in the army, you can control everything from a tent on the sidelines, but I want to be on the front lines. There’s so much joy in the process of retailing, in serving and living your brand, and there’s so much that can still be done. Retail is like a stage. It’s not just transactional; you can actually participate in it. I think a lot of retailers miss the point. Giving your staff a budget and saying that’s what you have to focus on doesn’t mean anything to a customer. People are very savvy. They understand when they’re being targeted. Why don’t we thrill them, rather than push them into something? Why don’t we entice them? These are all things a good retailer has to do on a daily level, and it can be so much fun. If retail isn’t compelling, it’s like watching a bad movie. How many times are you going to be bothered by that? IRW: I was going to ask how your business is impacted by the rising cost of leases, but then you said you recently bought your building. Was that part of your rationale to purchase? CT: We had a landlord for 30 years, who was a real nightmare, and we were paying above-market rent. The way I looked at it was that it taught me how to be an excellent businessperson because we had to cope with such a heavy load, but I knew that we couldn’t just move. It had to be the right place at the right time. By chance, something came up for sale just five doors up the road. It was frustrating for me because I always really wanted to do it, but we never had an opportunity. So when the opportunity came, we jumped on it so fast it wasn’t funny. IRW: Do you have plans to open any other stores, or will you expand through your online store? CT: I wouldn’t rule it out, but it would have to be the right thing. It would have to be something we could personalise and make right for the location, not just cut and paste from our existing store. The Octopus store in Newtown is very much geared for that suburb. Online is certainly growing, but for us, it will never replace our bricks-and-mortar business. IRW: When did you launch online, and how has it developed since then? CT: We were one of the first gift and homewares businesses to go online in 1998. We try to give people the same sense of who we are and what we do online as we do in-store. It’s definitely a growth area of the business for us, but it’s not as straightforward as it sounds. Online is growing but in different ways [than bricks-and-mortar], and they’re not always profitable ways. Anything we sell online, you can buy cheaper from somewhere overseas. That’s a problem for us. Price point is very important to thrive online, but we’re not prepared to price sacrifice because it goes against what we do in-store. There are a lot of online retailers that have got really big turnover, but their profitability is tiny. That’s a concern for me. We want to make money; it’s not just about turnover. IRW: What are some other examples of online growth not being profitable? CT: There are a few ways you can make your business a lot bigger online. One is to make the business more price competitive, and the other is to spend a lot more money on online advertising like Google AdWords. Three years ago, it cost 8¢, but it’s become so expensive now. In order to operate online properly, you need a dedicated team, and if you take into account the cost of your premises and all the rest… Of course it can still be profitable, but it’s not what people think. People think you’re cutting out all the overhead when you go online, but you’re not really. You need a specialist team. You can’t just set up a website and hope people visit. You’ve got to drive traffic, and it’s a daily thing. And the competition is really stiff. IRW: Having a unique mix of brands must be an important draw card for Opus, but that entails a certain amount of risk. How do you handle that? CT: I think it’s all about having the core brands that will give you consistency, that are available everywhere, but that people really want and need, so you know what your sales will be every week. But it’s also about introducing brands that are new and exciting, even if they don’t make financial sense, but just to bring a ‘wow’ element. Sometimes it’s something that some people don’t even understand initially, it’s a little bit left of centre. It’s like a recording artist; they have to come out with an album every now and then that doesn’t even make sense but just creates a lot of noise. You sometimes need to have people walk past your window and stop and think, ‘What the hell is going on here?’. Because if you just blend in, your brand erodes over time. You need people to want to rediscover your store all the time because they’re bombarded with Instagram and emails and the pace of life, so you want to entice them back with more than just the fact that you carry a brand that everyone else has. You just need to take a risk sometimes. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a profit maker, it just needs to bring people into the store. IRW: Are you finding, though, that brands are happier to sell direct-to-consumer nowadays, and not necessarily looking for retailers to stock their products? CT: It has become a much more competitive playing field. More brands are going directto-consumer, and pretty much any brand we have that’s an international brand you can buy from an overseas website. You need to have the energy to make enough noise to cut through that, because you can’t blame the customer for wanting to buy things more cheaply. In this environment, you need to make sure your own brand is strong. Creating an Opus brand, understanding what it is, trying to sell it to customers and make them really fall in love with it is the challenge. IRW: How do you do that, aside from the things you’ve already mentioned like amazing window displays and cool fitouts? CT: The customer service aspect is very important. We really go out of our way for customers; there’s not a thing we wouldn’t do. We are constantly thinking about what we can do to improve the way we serve customers, which actually isn’t that common. Most people don’t get that when they go shopping now. The other day, I delivered a piece of furniture to a customer on a Saturday night after work, we’ll wrap everything for free, take things to the customer’s car…you name it, we do it. That’s how you create love for a brand. It’s a lot of work because it needs to be consistent, but certainly it pays off. IRW: Christmas is really crucial in the gifting and homewares sector. How important is it for your business? CT: It’s pretty much the thing that allows us to survive throughout the year. The six weeks leading into Christmas are where we make most of the profit for the year, that’s for sure. A lot of our focus throughout the year is on Christmas. We have other occasions, but we’re always talking and thinking about Christmas. IRW: Any expectations for how the trading period will go this year? CT: It was a bit of a patchy start to the year, but sometimes consumer confidence comes back at Christmas. I think this year will be really good; we’re certainly putting a lot of money behind it with a lot of stock and a really strong PR campaign that we’re starting this month. The new season stock is still coming in, so I can’t predict what the biggest products will be, but traditionally we sell a lot of books and novelties. Hydration items like reusable bottles and that whole ‘eco’ space has been a really big trend this year. IRW: You recently launched your own brand in this space, Think Cup. Do you have plans to create any other private label brands? CT: Not at the moment, but Think Cup is becoming a bigger deal. We have a distributor in New Zealand, and we’re about to launch a glass water bottle that’s absolutely beautiful in October. We’re doing a limited edition range as well, so that range is expanding and it’s really going to be our focus. IRW: Opus Design received the International Housewares Association’s Global Innovation Award for Australia last year. What do you think made your business stand out in a field that included heavyweights like Harrods? CT: I think we stand out because we don’t let anything simmer for too long. We’re constantly reinventing our website, we’re always bringing new brands on, the way we do our visual merchandising is a little bit different and unique. We never have days where we’re just coasting. It’s not set and forget, and I think people can feel the difference. IRW: How do you strike the balance between keeping things constantly new and interesting and setting a longer-term strategy? CT: It’s challenging and exhausting. It’s not for the fainthearted, that’s for sure, but the question is how many other retailers in our category, or any category, have survived for 50 years? It’s important to step back and do broad picture stuff, but I think a lot of retailers take their businesses for granted. I won’t be very popular for saying that, but I think people in retail only realise there’s a problem when things are going backwards, but the problem actually starts a long way before that. The owner of Alibaba was quoted as saying he works every day like his life depends on it. I’m the same – I don’t take anything for granted. I never feel that we’ve done enough because I don’t think our customers deserve anything else. I don’t think the standard of retail in Australia is that great. That’s not a popular view, but I just think we take too many shortcuts, especially on the service side of things. I think that’s where we fall over.