Culture Kings founders Tahnee and Simon Beard step down
Husband and wife team Tahnee and Simon Beard will chase new adventures following the smash hit opening of their Las Vegas store.
Tahnee and Simon Beard, the multi-millionaire husband and wife founders of sneaker retail empire Culture Kings who started on the Gold Coast selling slippers in schoolies week, have stepped down from running their sneakers chain after the successful opening of its maiden store in the United States.
Mr Beard told The Australian he would continue to be an active stakeholder in the Culture Kings business, after he and his wife sold a half share in the trendy sneakers retailer in 2021 to US company a.k.a Brands for $300m and took shares for the other 50 per cent holding. But he believed now was the right time for him and his wife to step down from the day-to-day running of the sneakers business — although Mr Beard remains a director of the Wall Street-listed a.k.a Brands — as they focus on family and new entrepreneurial ventures.
“As the founder it’s my baby, and Tahnee has delivered the Las Vegas store and is beating expectations, but Tahnee and I are entrepreneurial to our core and the public company or holding company role it’s not for me, not my best fit,” Mr Beard told The Australian.
“We have built a great team there and I believe they can go and run it, I am still on the board, and I’m there whenever I can help and guide it but for us we are entrepreneurs.”
The shift comes after Culture Kings late last year opened its first store in the US, unveiling its most ambitious and glitzy store yet at the famed Caesars Palace casino in Las Vegas situated on the bright lights of the city’s casino strip.
In an investor briefing to analysts for its latest quarterly earnings a.k.a Brands interim chief executive Ciaran Long said the performance of the new Las Vegas Culture Kings store was ahead of expectations.
“The Culture Kings flagship store that opened in November is exceeding our expectations, and we’re pleased with the halo effect the store is having in online sales,” Mr Long told investors.
The Las Vegas Culture Kings site is at the heart of Caesars Palace casino’s shopping mecca, the Forum Shops, which in terms of sales per square foot is rated as the highest grossing mall in the US to even outshine Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills.
Mr Long believes the Culture Kings retail format — known for its hyperactive stores that feature basketball courts, DJs, barbers and even a recording studio that often draws in celebrities — has huge potential for growth in the US.
“We’re bullish on Culture Kings expansion in the US, and I’m more confident than ever after seeing the initial success of the stores in Vegas,” he said.
“The store is exceeding expectations in revenue, traffic and brand building activities. Equally as exciting is the impact the stores have had on online sales since it opened in early November. We’ve seen great traction with in-store events, drawing artists such as ASAP Ferg and athletes such as Kirk Cousins and Marlon Humphrey from the NFL and celebrities such as Ludacris … have all shopped the Vegas store.”
The new Culture Kings store in Las Vegas features a 75-foot hat wall and a “secret room” featuring the most sought-after items on the streetwear market. Its opening party in November was followed by an invitation-only afterparty sponsored by champagne house Moet Hennessy and featuring a performance by DJ Drama. Earlier this month US rapper Snoop Dogg visited a Culture Kings store in Melbourne, with thousands of people lining up to see him at the sneaker store.
The Gold Coast husband and wife Beards, who started off selling slippers to schoolies, founded Culture Kings in 2008 on the Gold Coast and have since turned it into one of the hottest concepts in retail. Although it only has a handful of stores in Australia and one in New Zealand it has proved incredibly successful, pumping out around $100m a quarter in sales from its fast-growing fanbase of customers who seek limited edition or must-have sneakers.
Mr Beard said opening the Las Vegas store was a milestone for Culture Kings and represented the ambitions he and his wife always had for the innovate retail concept.
“We’ve always had this thing that retail should be entertainment. And the US is the entertainment capital of the world, and choosing Vegas was because it’s the entertainment capital in that it has this real theatre and show that we could create.
“It’s got a recording studio, a basketball court and we do crazy events, like almost a few times a week, and we just had a boxing ring in there, and there’s so many activations and it’s just really working. And it’s cool to see because it’s like it was a scary thing, the vision.
“And Jesus, we are still these people from the Gold Coast and the thought comes into your ahead – are we going to be able to do it? But when we opened we had queues down the street.”
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