Australian Geographic, an iconic homegrown brand is making a return to physical retail with its new partnership with QBD Books. The two brands will integrate online in June, followed by the nationwide launch of Australian Geographic shop-in-shops in QBD stores by mid-August. These will include books, educational toys and branded products. Branded kiosks are also part of the plan.
“We always thought we’d have a preference to have physical retail again but we were waiting for the right partner. We weren’t in a rush at all. QBD approached us and it’s a good fit with our brand. They seemed to really understand and appreciate the brand.” – Jo Runciman, Australian Geographic, Managing Director
“We’re primarily a brand and media company and although we had a very successful online retail period in November, retail isn’t our speciality, so we wanted to work with retail specialists and do a good job of it. We’ve always had a small e-commerce operation just selling our own books and we hadn’t focused on it because we had retail partners,” concluded Runciman.
“But [this month] it was something like 595 per cent year-on-year, which is a crazy number. Last month was even higher than that. We went from making a few thousand dollars a month in e-commerce to a couple hundreds of thousands of dollars a month.”
