Smiggle co-founder, Stephen Meurs, is making a comeback to the stationery market following the launch of a new product line within his tween chain, Pavement. The move comes five years after Smiggle was acquired by the Just Group for a reported $29 million. In 2013, Meurs created tween clothing, footwear, and accessories chain, Pavement, aimed at eight to 16 year olds. The new concept has in turn lead to the closure and conversion of his childrenswear label, Gumboots, with all 26 Gumboots stores
converted to Pavement last year.
“Gumboots was primarily focused on two to eight year olds. We saw potential to grow a teen market brand, so we dropped Gumboots and took the whole brand into the teen space,” Meurs told Inside Retail PREMIUM exclusively.
Pavement is the first Australian chain to solely target tweens.
“Pavement caters for the full lifestyle of the teen market age group. As well as clothing, we’ve introduced gift products and stationery under the Nonsense brand and we’ve also developed jewellery and body care such as nail polish and perfume.”
Its homebrand stationery line, Nonsense, is expected to open as a standalone retail concept in Australia within the next 18 months.
“The brand has only been in the market for about six months so we’re still going through the development phase.
“We’re learning about the brand and finding out what the customer wants and what they are really responding to.
“Opening a Nonsense store will probably happen between the later half of this year to early 2015.”
Meurs plans to take the Nonsense model overseas, with the first international bricks and mortar store likely to open in Asia around the same time as its Australian debut.
“There are some overseas markets we’re looking into for wholesale and retail stores but there will definitely be stores overseas. We’ve had a lot of interest come out of Asia.”
According to Meurs, Nonsense is more fashion forward compared to Smiggle.
“It’s targeted particularly at our age customer, and it’s much more fashion forward than Smiggle, which is based on commodity goods just coloured and with basic graphics. Our products are much more about reflecting key fashion trends.”
Pavement’s latest store to open was its NSW flagship at Westfield Bondi Junction in December.
Meurs is looking to grow Pavement’s presence in Queensland this year, where it has one store.
“We’ve only got one store in Queensland, so we would like to expand into that market more.”
The tween inspired chain also has concept stores within David Jones nationwide.
“Opening new stores is based on when the right location comes up. It needs to fit with the criteria of our brand. We don’t have an aggressive rollout plan, we’re just opportunistic.
“We are looking at some locations at the moment, but we’re after A-grade fashion centres.”
This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 1990.
