V-ZUG has announced plans to expand its V-ZUG Studio destination with new locations in Sydney and Brisbane to open over the coming year.
“V-ZUG Studios are aimed to provide a brand immersion in a V-ZUG design in a mono-brand environment. We currently have one located at our Kew head office in Melbourne and late 2022 or early 2023 we are planning on opening our own Sydney showroom at a beautiful site in Surry Hills,” V-ZUG managing director, Nic Naes told Appliance Retailer.
“A number of premium appliance brands are operating nearby in Surry Hills – and we believe it is a good thing to have these brands targeting a similar consumer base to be close to each other. We attract the same customer and that customer can decide what suits them best. Our distribution partnership with Winning Group is iron-clad and will be supported by these single-brand environments.
“Next year we will be opening our V-ZUG Studio in Brisbane. We have a potential property in mind and this we be in a premium location where you would expect to find us. The year after next – in mid-2024 – we are relocating our Melbourne Studio and we will then have three key Studios in three key locations,” he said.
Winning Group and V-ZUG embarked on a new partnership in early 2020, which was a first for the V-ZUG business internationally and the first time for Winnings to take on what they did as well.
“There have been a lot of learnings and we are still embedding some of these elements,” Naes said.
“However, I think I speak for us and for Winnings when I say that this has been an absolute success story and we would make the same decision again – ten times over. We are moving forward together and also launching a number of initiatives – whether it is how we treat customers in store through to the after-sales service process or the strategy around V-ZUG Studios.
“What we do with Winnings, particularly in their flagship stores is amazing and the support we have in terms of space and being able to have creative freedom is fantastic, however we both also see the benefit of having standalone mono-branded environments. I have recently visited our London Studio and we were fortunate to have some of the team from Winnings at the opening of our Paris Studio as well. We are currently opening Studios throughout the globe quite rapidly – on average once a month or 12 each year.
“B2C pre-purchase and post-purchase demonstrations are something that we also do well in our collaboration with the Winnings retail network. The end customer who knows where they bought the product – can go back to the Winnings store and speak to the person that we have trained or meet someone from V-ZUG – we also bring many of these activities online.
“Every month we would have up to 900 of our customers joining us for live-streaming sessions online in Australia. We run these events – typically via Facebook – and we invite our existing customers and host a live stream from our studio in Melbourne. We have one person on camera and another person moderating and ahead of time we go out to our customers and say if you want to cook with us – these are things you are going to have to buy – but if you don’t want to cook with us – you are still welcome to join. We also have post-event amplification with more people watching the recording afterwards as well,” Naes said.