Resortwear brand Tigerlily is expanding further into New Zealand. It has just unveiled a New Zealand-specific e-commerce site, and will soon open a new store at the upmarket Newmarket precinct, which is currently undergoing redevelopment.
The Newmarket Tigerlily physical store will feature the brand’s new store design, which came into play around six months ago.
“Our stores used to be a real habitat, almost like lifestyle stores in that they were created to look like a bazaar – there was lots of furniture and loads of things on the walls,” explained Gareth Connolly, merchandise and supply chain director at Tigerlily.
“Now we’ve done some decluttering – we wanted the product to be a hero. The Sydney Westfield store is a lot cleaner than what you may have seen before. Now, we embellish stores with just a beautiful living palm tree, instead of a bird cage and map of the world. It’s got a cleaner atmosphere … you’re not distracted by the rug, cushions and maps. It’s just about telling people that this is what we sell – not furniture.”
Capturing the customer
Meanwhile, the brand is also working on increasing its omnichannel presence in Australia, with plans to introduce several new services to customers, including click-and-collect, ship-from-store, endless aisles and floor-to-door.
According to Connelly, floor-to-door is available for customers who enter a Tigerlily shop but find that the item they want is not available in-store in their size. It can be sent to them instead.
“I don’t think Australians have done click-and-collect that well yet, but that’s the next thing we’re working on. We want to make sure there’s no reason for a customer to not get a product tomorrow,” he said.
“If there’s not a particular item in our Bondi store for our customer, we’ll get it to her somehow. That’s an expectation created internationally and we’re not that good at it because we’re such a big country. Getting something from Sydney to someone to Perth is hard, but doing floor-to-door or ship-from-store will make things easier for us.”
