Smiggle
 |
|
| Subsidiary | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | 2003 |
| Headquarters | Richmond, Victoria, Australia |
|
Area served
|
Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, United Kingdom, Hong Kong and Malaysia |
|
Key people
|
Stephen Meurs and Peter Pausewang (founders) Mark McInnes (Just Group CEO) John Cheston (Smiggle General Manager) |
| Products | Stationery, accessories,toys |
| Parent | = |
| Website | Smiggle.com |
Smiggle is an Australian-based retail store chain that sells stationery and related accessories. It was founded in Melbourne by Stephen Meurs and Peter Pausewang in 2003 and acquired by the Just Group in July 2007. As of February 2016, the chain has stores located across Australia (135), New Zealand (23), Singapore (17), United Kingdom (42), Hong Kong (5) and Malaysia (4). Smiggle is renowned for its use of vibrant bold colours and quirky graphics on most of its branded products.
Smiggle started as an idea by Stephen Meurs and Peter Pausewang who saw a gap in the market for fun, engaging, collectable, fashionable, and affordable stationery aimed at the 5 to 14 year age group. In late 2002, Meurs started designing, developing and producing the first lines of Smiggle stationery, while Kate Martino was tasked to look for suitable retail sites around Melbourne. They decided on the name, 'Smiggle' as a mashup word for smile and giggle, reflecting their aims for the products. In addition to retailing, Meurs and Pausewang wanted to get into wholesaling, so they entered as late applicants in a Sydney trade fair with just two weeks to prepare. Commenting on that first trade fair, Martino told Dynamic Business; "To our amazement the reaction we got was overwhelming so we thought, well we're onto something here." The Smiggle team then recruited a wholesale manager, allowing the wholesaling and retailing arms of the new business to grow in tandem.
In March 2003, Smiggle opened its first retail outlet on Chapel Street, South Yarra, a famous shopping, dining and entertainment precinct within inner-Melbourne. "We branded our product very quickly from the early days, and we did that simply by choosing where we sat our stores," adds Martino. "We sat down as a team and worked out where we felt we needed to chase the sites and set up the original Smiggle stores. Given we're all Melbourne people and it's the city we know best, we purposely chose our sites in Melbourne close to schools, private girls schools and areas where we felt we could easily brand the product. But we realised for the retail aspect to grow we needed many sites," she explains. "So from South Yarra we opened [the second outlet at] Southland Shopping Centre, which was our very first centre store. We then opened Brighton, Melbourne Central, Hawthorn and so on."
...
Wikipedia