e&s director Rob Sinclair has confirmed plans for its 12th store to open in Melbourne next year before the new-build Mornington store opens in 2027.
Sinclair has also confirmed that the Mornington store will now be 50 per cent larger than initially planned prior to the purchase of the business by JB Hi-Fi.
“We have already announced that we will be opening a store in Mornington in 2027, but we are planning to open at least one more new store between now and then,” Sinclair said.
“We have all of the infrastructure and processes for the Victorian marketplace already in place so it is easy for us to fill in the gaps in the market geographically in Melbourne.
“With the support of JB Hi-Fi under the new ownership structure, we are in a position where we have a capacity to roll out more stores. We recognise there are gaps in the metropolitan Melbourne market that we are not servicing currently. Those gaps are located both in the west and in the east of Melbourne – and potentially a little bit further from the inner city locations that we already have in place.”
“I have just seen the plans going to council for our standalone Mornington store to be constructed over the next two years. I am pleased to confirm that the JB Hi-Fi team has supported us to grow the size of that store. It was initially only going to be a 1200 square metre boutique store and it will grow to 1800 square metres – making it a major metro store in Mornington. It will have a great corner position with fantastic visibility to a major road and it will be a brilliant store for us when it opens in 2027.
“At e&s we have three store types – we have a flagship store that shows everything that we do – a good example of this is Chadstone that has 600 square metres of commercial space and then another 2500 square metres for the remainder of the retail brands that we have. These flagship stores have offices and we can meet designers and architects and meet builders for commercial and retail projects.
“Our next store type is a major metro store from 1800 square metres like the new Epping store up to 2500 square metres with a store like Preston being an outlier at 3000 square metres. Then we have our inner city boutiques that range from as small as 600 square metres up to 1000 or 1200 square metres.
“As e&s grows its retail footprint nationally around Australia, it is important that we use these three different store formats to deliver our vision.”
“Before we are ready to roll out our store in other states we still have systems and processes to be fine-tuned – but that process is well underway. We want to have everything perfect so that when we do open a store in another location around Australia we have our store right, our teams right, our logistics right, our purchasing right so that we can deliver our e&s experience no matter where we are.
“We have a clear vision as a business in terms of how we service our customers. The DNA of e&s remains delightfully intact after eight months of the JB Hi-Fi ownership. That DNA is now supported by a very large business that delivers us significant infrastructure and financial support to be able to more readily and easily open stores. We are going to be careful and considered about our next steps, but this is a very exciting time as we enter the next growth phase of e&s.”