“All retail is experiential”: Smart50 winner July opens third Melbourne store

On the opening of the luggage brand’s third Melbourne store, July co-founders Athan Didaskalou and Richard Li discuss the benefits and beauty of experiential retail — a field they expect to boom in the coming years.

Plenty of successful e-commerce brands make their way to physical stores as a sign of a strong brand and method of exposure to new customers. But for Didaskalou and Li, it’s about a lot more than that. In a time when confidence in e-commerce is up but confidence in delivery timelines is way down, July really sees physical retail as a way to service its customers quickly.

In travel, Didaskalou reminds us, “people leave tomorrow“.

“People’s journeys are so hectic and so time-constrained, why send them to a competitor? Physical retail allows you to capture that customer because they’re time-sensitive.”

This latest store for July, winner at the 2022 Smart50 awards, is located at 80 Collins Street in Melbourne’s ‘Paris End’ near many offices, luxury retail outlets and fine dining establishments. And there is a difference between its purpose and that of, say, July’s Collingwood location, located in formerly industrial areas, a little more spread out. The two placements and styles help the brand satisfy more customers in the right ways.

In Collingwood: “People just want to be able to bring the car around, load up the back of the boot and drive off with their family. Going into the city sometimes is inconvenient.

“We basically need foot traffic and need to be able to make it easy for people to discover us but also make it easy for people to walk away. Luggage in particular is a difficult one because it is such a bulky good. So you need to be able to facilitate that.”

Sometimes, though, the city is the answer. For the business crowd in and around 80 Collins Street: “They’re all people who are quickly on their lunch break, they’re in and out, they want to get a very good understanding of the product in minutes. So you’ve got to be able to give them that opportunity to come in and play and leave and then purchase online if they want to as well.”

“All retail is experiential”

The physical stores let July introduce experiential marketing to its suite. “All retail is experiential,” said Didaskalou.

“At the end of the day, all physical retail is experiential. When you’re coming into our retail stores, you are going in there to understand the feel, to understand the material, to understand the space.”

It’s a field they expect to boom in coming years, as brands look to reconnect with customers so limited to what Li calls the “cold website on a screen” of digital-only shopping.

“You get to speak to the people behind the scenes… people enjoy coming to the store, sharing their journey, their next trip, where they’re going. These are things you cannot get being a purely online business.”

“Once retail rents actually normalise a little bit,” Didaskalou said. “You’re going to start seeing a lot more experiential retail. A lot more people doing retail purely for marketing and for customer experience.”

And the July approach looks like a good one, though not all business leaders will be able to keep up the same commitment. Didaskalou and Li, leaders of Australia’s fastest-growing SME, are often behind the counters at July stores.

“If you come into the Collingwood store, there’s a one-in-20 chance you’re going to get Richard or myself serving you,” Didaskalou said. “We’re so product driven, we start pulling out samples, we start telling you about stuff that we’re working on in the next six months, and you won’t get that anywhere else.”