Smiggle Smarts

Stationery is more than just an essential item for offices and school bags, it’s becoming a much-desired fashion item - And as Rebecca Spicer reports, it’s partly thanks to Smiggle, the small company taking on the stationery big boys with its bright-coloured and funky range.

I first came across Smiggle at the February 2002 GHA trade fair in Sydney when the infant company took out a small corner stand "to see how things would go". The name was interesting and got me wondering about the product that was behind it—this was the exact reaction the owners wanted. "That was the main reason behind getting a name that was different," explains Kate Martino, general manager of Smiggle. "It was all about creating that interest."

Martino has been with Smiggle since its inception, working with owners Stephen Meurs and Peter Pausewang to help bring the brand to life. All with extensive retail experience, they got behind the fashion stationery concept—originated by Meurs—with a belief they could capture an untapped niche.

Now, the founders of Smiggle are able to smile and giggle (hence Smiggle) at the degree of their own success.

Meurs designed, developed, sampled and started production of the first Smiggle range in late 2002, while Martino started looking for retail sites. Before long, Meurs and Pausewang realised there could also be great scope for wholesaling, so took the range and the concept to their first trade fair in Sydney. As late applicants, Smiggle were lucky to hear there was an exhibitor pulling out at the last minute and prepared for the trade show in just two weeks. "To our amazement the reaction we got was overwhelming so we thought, well we’re onto something here." Smiggle then recruited a wholesale manager, so both the wholesaling and retailing arms of the business could grow in tandem.

In March 2003, with a clear strategy in place, Smiggle opened its first retail site in South Yarra. "We branded our product very quickly from the early days, and we did that simply by choosing where we sat our stores," explains 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 adds. "So from South Yarra we opened Southland, which was our very first centre store. We then opened Brighton, Melbourne Central, Hawthorn and so on. We now have 11 stores in Melbourne."

Making Inroads

While tackling the gift and homewares industry was initially overwhelming, thanks to plenty of competition, Martino knew their offering was so different to other brands that they created their own market. "It’s so eye-catching, it’s functional, it’s got a design-edge to it, and the price is right. So that will always be our strength," she explains. "As a team initially, it was about making a difference and making it happen our way, rather than looking at what other people were doing and trying to copy somebody else.

"People said to us in the early days, ‘Oh stationery, Office Works are doing that so well’. But we had to explain that Office Works is at one end of the scale and we’re at the other. We’re offering a different product, we’re offering an image, we’re offering an identity, and that’s exactly what we did. We infiltrated the schools very quickly, it became a fashion item; like young girls wear different earrings, they were then buying from us a lovely notebook and a matching calculator, the matching pen, some pencils, a pencil case, so when they were going to school they were saying ‘look at me’. And I guess, in essence, that’s been Smiggle from day one—we do bright colours, we change the designs, we have key products we keep as our base product, but more and more the design is growing, it’s developing.