Behind Desigual’s repositioning and its Asia Pacific expansion

Earlier this month, Desigual partnered with Melbourne-based brand management firm O’Rourke Showroom to unveil its spring-summer collection, further expanding its retail distribution in Asia Pacific. 

Inside Retail spoke to Balázs Krizsanyik, GM of Desigual Asia Pacific, and Tim O’Rourke, national sales and managing director at O’Rourke Showroom, to learn more about the brand’s local strategy for the Australian market and its expansion strategy globally. 

Inside Retail: What are the reasons behind Desigual’s return to Australia?  

Tim O’Rourke: Desigual has been available in Australia for more than a decade and is sold in a wide range of wholesale accounts. Desigual has fine-tuned and tested its new creative direction in the rest of the world and the time has now come to make bold and big decisions regarding brand building and selecting distribution partners. Growing our existing wholesale partners is the main goal and the genesis of the push for further brand presence in the market.

IR: Could you elaborate more on the expansion strategies in this market? Are there any specific tactics or partnerships that have proven particularly effective? 

TO: Off the back of the success Desigual has seen in the Asia Pacific region, growing the brand’s audience through the new creative direction is largely thanks to collaborations with interesting designers such as Christian Lacroix, Alphonse Maitrepierre, Collina Strada, or María Escoté and brand ambassadors like Amelia Grey and Hari Nef. Initiatives like these are a key part of Desigual’s commitment to staying relevant and offering a fresh approach to the brand. 

Desigual has direct touchpoints in key locations globally, our customer is one that travels and so a big part of our key strategy as we commence is to communicate directly our new direction to metro stores and conquest partners. It’s early days. It is the beginning of a great journey and a stronger focus on PR and marketing for the first time in Australia, and will allow us to reach a broad new audience while engaging existing clientele, with the exciting new offerings and wide range available.

IR: What are the plans for Desigual in terms of new market entries or product developments in Asia Pacific? Are there any specific countries or regions within Asia Pacific that are being targeted? 

Balázs Krizsanyik: Currently, the vast majority of our existing business is concentrated in Japan, Greater China and Singapore, markets where we still have tremendous opportunities especially when it comes to China’s megacities with our ongoing offline expansion – the market doing particularly well for us even during economic hardships impacting the sector overall. We are following on the other hand key markets such as South Korea and India very closely, I would bet they will be the next market entries coming up. At the same time, [our] Singaporean operations [are] running for more than 20 years strong [and] we believe, in the mid-term, it is time for Southeast Asia – especially markets where currently we trade well in different channels such as Malaysia, Philippines or Thailand – to upgrade business models and start a deeper omnichannel development and offer consumers physical mono-brand touchpoints as well.

IR: Could you touch on the brand’s business and social media strategy to cater to local consumers and attract new retail partners? How does Desigual plan to engage with the community and build a loyal customer base?

TO: Our goal is to ensure localised success and capture the essence of the ‘New Desigual’ and the contemporary product range. The initial strategy is to focus on connecting with a new target audience, young women in their 20s and 30s, engaging with a local pool of brand ambassadors to grow a community of Desigual girls in Australia. We kicked off with a partnership with local model and actress Sarah Ellen and hosted a launch cocktail party at the iconic Icebergs and Dining Room + Bar [in Sydney], bringing together a dynamic mix of creatives and fashion media to solidify our focus on the market. We are excited to continue to work with local ambassadors who speak to our new creative direction.

With this strategy and a focus on PR and influencer engagement, the objective is to refresh and grow the list of stockists we have at the moment in the market while continuing to build the digital backbone. We want to meet our customers wherever she is — whether that be online, social or brick-and-mortar stockists.

IR: Does the retail strategy change depending on the market?

BK: Absolutely. There are markets such as China where retail is [actually just] a brand positioning and clienteling tool completing a robust online channel, while in Japan stores still play a strategic role and will continue to do so as consumers feel more comfortable purchasing products in a physical space and put a lot of emphasis on the overall customer experience when opting for a particular brand. Our omnichannel approach to markets allows us to adapt and continuously build a distribution which fits the shopping habits of the consumers as well as our level of maturity as a brand and organisation in any given country.

IR: Can you share some insights on the challenges that Desigual has faced during this expansion? What lessons have been learned and how is the company planning to overcome these obstacles moving forward?

TO: The new Desigual is more fashion-forward and contemporary than ever and this is resonating globally and translating to the success we are seeing in the Asia Pacific region. Whilst the alignment has never been stronger for Australian consumers, the challenge here is to shift the perception from where the brand was 10 years ago entering Australia, and where the brand is now. With the new creative vision and direction, the brand has been working on for the past few years, we can communicate this directly to bring on new commercial partners that are in line with our repositioning, whilst growing our existing wholesale business.

IR: Can you touch on Desigual’s brand refresh a few years ago? What was the reason for it? How did you go about reaching a younger customer? And what have the results been so far? 

BK: We stepped onto a completely new path in 2022 indeed. A radical change was necessary to bring back the innovation, creativity and contemporary power of the brand so marked in its DNA. We decided to change creative direction impacting all touchpoints our consumers can see, feel and touch: the product, our communication, our contents and campaigns, and our store concept. The result is a much younger, fashion-forward, re-born brand taking over not only the fashion industry again during the past seasons but also new consumers who “thought they would never wear Desigual”. 

The fantastic collaborations we are launching, our efforts to put AI at the centre of everything we do, the renewed and reinforced accessories line especially bags and backpacks, the re-editing of core categories such as dresses and t-shirts, the solid colours versus prints-on-prints, our steadfast sustainability efforts all helped us to regain traction while staying true to ourselves and our creative archive of the past 40 years while looking into the bright future.

IR: What was the highlight of the brand’s recent runway show to mark its 40th anniversary? What does it signal about the brand’s future?

BK: The highlight was not only our anniversary itself but a glow-up of a beautiful brand, probably one of the most creative and innovative in our segment as of today. At Desigual, we tend to look rather into the future and while editing the runway collection indeed we turned our eyes to the vast archive of the brand, the protagonist was the fashion of tomorrow and our standing within the fashion ecosystem as a proud contemporary brand with a distinctive heritage inspired by Barcelona and a strong vision for the next decade to come.

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