Louis Vuitton invests in the luxury of space

THE luxury brand's new store in an Edmund Blacket-designed heritage building is truly a "maison".

LOUIS Vuitton's new Sydney store on George Street is impressive, to say the least.

Prior to its official opening tomorrow, WISH was given an exclusive private tour by the company's Oceania chief executive officer, Philip Corne (pictured). At the time of the tour, workmen were buzzing around the 1200sqm store putting the finishing touches on the space before it becomes filled with merchandise (and from tomorrow, customers).

When WISH entered the heritage-listed building through the George Street entrance, we couldn't help but let out an audible "wow" at the sheer scale of the ground floor selling space. "That's exactly the sort of reaction I like to see," says Corne. Louis Vuitton refers to stores of this scale as "maisons", which means they stock every category of product in the brand's arsenal from trunks to ready-to-wear to fine jewellery.

The location of the Louis Vuitton Sydney store on the corner of King and George streets represents a shift away from the traditional home of luxury goods on Castlereagh Street. The Edmund Blacket-designed building, which was originally a bank, later a pub and dates from the 1860s, would not have been an obvious choice to most luxury brand chiefs. Nor was it for Corne.

"The individual who owns this building came up to me at the Gold Dinner in 2009, just as I was leaving and said, 'We've got to get together. I've got to show you something.' And at that point we had been around and around Sydney and we were pretty well set to reinvest in Castlereagh Street because there was nothing else we could find in terms of real estate," recalls Corne.

"I remember walking to the meeting and rehearsing how I could say, 'Look, I'm sorry ... thanks, but no thanks.' And he said to me, 'Before you say anything, let me show you this.' And he pulled out some artist's impressions of what he believed the store could look like and I looked at them and just said, 'OK, show me inside.' When I entered the space and I saw the volume and saw what was here, I really started to understand the potential. So I went back to Paris; a member of the executive committee came down a month or so later and the deal was done."

That was July 2009. More than two years later, Corne is preparing to lift the curtain on what is undoubtedly the biggest statement by a European luxury brand about the strength of the market here. "At the moment in the major markets we are working hard to have stores that can really present the brand in a very strong way," he says. "Space is luxury and it's really about maximising the presentation of the product and the service of the customer. In a major market such as Sydney you really need a larger store to do that.

"I think the Australian market has become very sophisticated but in a more casual way," says Corne, who returned here in 2003 after a five-year stint with Louis Vuitton in the US and noted a change in our luxury market. "The Australian customer really understands quality and service and is aware of the global market. We wouldn't have any of this investment if it wasn't for the local customer, that's what's driving the investment decision."