e customers can have their makeup, hair and nails done and MeccaVersity Auditorium, an education space that will unite customers, team members and the community. Most importantly, like any great Australian retailer, it’s the store staff who will make the experience truly unique, and along with committing to an opening timeline, Mecca announced that it has commenced the recruitment process for 300 new roles. Mecca’s chief of new concepts Maria Tsaousis spoke to Inside Retail about what the business looks for during the recruitment process and what it means for Mecca’s retail strategy. Inside Retail: What does Mecca look for in its team members and how has it gone about recruiting for these 300 new roles?  Maria Tsaousis: Our team are beauty experts who care deeply about helping our customers look, feel and be their best. We look for team members with a passion for beauty, but more importantly, a passion for helping others and a willingness to learn.  Mecca Bourke Street will be the home of the biggest team we’ve ever seen in one store and our vision is to create a special, supportive place to work, with best-in-class tools of the trade, operations and facilities. It will also be our first store to achieve WELL certification, a global rating system of evidence-based design, policy and operational strategies that when implemented, can support the wellbeing of the people in the building. As part of our commitment to internal promotion, we are thrilled to have been able to recruit a large number of the team internally and now have opened up to external applications. IR: What new job titles/roles have been created with the store’s new concepts?  MT: Through Mecca Bourke Street, we’re creating opportunities for development and career pathways within the store itself, our store network, and across Mecca more broadly. This includes introducing a range of new roles designed specifically to support the flagship store, such as new store-based leadership roles for each of our beauty categories, an events and activation team, concierge roles, an in-store visual merchandising team and specialist positions to deliver an elevated service offering to our customers. IR: Will the three new concepts be a pilot for other stores? MT: Mecca Bourke Street is our opportunity to launch a flagship experience that has never been seen before. It’s our incubator for innovation, bringing together everything we have learned from our 27 years of serving customers and from our travels all around the globe. Mecca Bourke Street will inform the future of beauty for our pipeline of new stores.  IR: How long has this store been in the works and how does it fit into Mecca’s retail strategy?  MT: More than 27 years in the making, Mecca Bourke Street is the catalyst for us to realise our new vision for beauty retailing. Fusing brands, services, experiences, culture, art,  education and entertainment, Mecca Bourke Street will be more than a store – it will be a human-centric, high-touch destination where beauty is felt, lived and experienced, not just transacted. Mecca Bourke Street is set to become an icon of Melbourne and bring together a diverse mix of customers from our beauty aficionados and loyalists to CBD office workers, young professionals, weekenders, and international tourists. It will house 200 of the very best beauty brands, and more than 80 services and experiences — all enveloped in a luxurious, layered and design-led store.