Earlier this week Winning Group announced it had acquired Sydney-based furniture, lightning and textiles retailer Spence & Lyda, bringing the business’ entire team into the fold, including founder Fiona Lyda.And now work is underway to combine Winning Appliances’ Redfern store with that of Spence & Lyda and Winning’s bathroom supply company Rogerseller to create a new breed of destination store: Winnings. The new store will jump from around 1400 square metres to 2400, and will offer customers a large selection of goods from across the business’ brands, rather than focusing on just one. “This is a really exciting project for us,” Harry Boileau, general manager of Winning Appliances, told Inside Retail. “We’ll have a dedicated alfresco area upstairs for the first time where we can show off our outdoor furniture, a lifestyle-fitness area with high-end brands, and then we’ll have a home automation display with a bespoke home cinema room.”The idea, Boileau explained, is to give Australians that are looking at major and minor home renovations a place to come and see what’s possible under one roof.While the store will facilitate single appliance and furniture purchases, it will truly shine when customers are interested in styling their home more widely, and want time to explore and talk to staff to understand their options. “This is definitely not a space where you come, spend $50 and walk out thinking ‘that was a good half an hour’,” said Boileau.“You’ll want to get fully immersed in all the different things happening. There’ll be full-time culinary people cooking, testing appliances, and our sales team helping to meet the needs of each customer.”One way Winnings is looking to showcase the potential of a larger, more experience-driven store is by creating ‘lifestyle’ areas, where the store highligthts a particular style of kitchen or bathroom, with all pieces matching and working together, in order to present a theme or style.Boileau said the store will spotlight three distinct kitchen types, similarly to how the business has done so with bathrooms in its Rogerseller stores.And, while the store is set to begin construction in July and is expected to open later this year, Winning Group is already thinking about where further multi-brand stores can be opened across the country.Boileau said it’s likely that after the first Winnings store launches in NSW, there will be similar offers opened in other states, though nothing is definite yet.“A massive learning for us”While Winning wouldn’t talk about how much the acquisition of Spence & Lyda cost, the acquisition does bring with it all of the business’ staff. Managing director Fiona Lyda will work with Winning Group for 12 months as creative director, and said she is excited to make the brand’s products available to more Australians. “We are excited to continue to grow the Spence & Lyda offering,” said Lyda. “We are now more than ever before, set for extraordinary things, particularly in the next 12 months with an exciting series of events being run as part of Melbourne Design Week this month and being part of Winnings in Redfern later this year”.The designer furniture and lighting retailer was established in 1997, and has largely been driven by Fiona Lyda’s vision.Boileau said Lyda will be instrumental over the next year in helping the Winnings team get their head around working within the furniture space.“When we entered the bathroom space [with Rogerseller], we realised that it’s very hard to enter a space without knowing what to do, or who the suppliers are, how the products come together, and how the stores should be laid out,” said Boileau. “So that was a massive learning for us, and we wanted to keep someone onboard who has that grounded knowledge of exactly how to execute a furniture and design business. “She [Lyda] has amazing relationships with other brands, especially overseas, as well as amazing talent in helping people make their dream home, which is exactly what Winnings’ goal is.”