: Helsinki to Sydney is almost a 20-hour flight, so tell me what has brought you to Australia and Bondi Beach specifically? Nathalie Ahlström: For Fiskars Group, Australia is our fifth largest market, it’s big. When you look at other global companies, not many can say Australia is their fifth-largest market, so this is a unique place for us, and also I see a lot of future potential for Fiskars Group in the Australian market. Today, in the market, we are big with the Fiskars brand – iconic for the orange handle scissors, Wedgewood, Georg Jensen and so on. I see this huge continued potential here, so that’s why I’m here. IR: You’ve mentioned a few brands in the portfolio that are quite big in Australia; is there any consumer demographic in particular in Australia that is loving these products? NA: Well, in consumer demographics, not only talking about Australia, many of our brands have extremely healthy consumer demographics. It’s from 20-year-olds to older, because the interest in owning well-designed, long-lasting, high-quality products starts when you move out from home and start collecting your own ranges. We are fortunate to have such a wide consumer demographic range. IR: How are you future-proofing the business, especially as the marriage rate is declining? Traditionally, consumers looked to brands like Wedgewood and some of the more premium brands in the portfolio for wedding and engagement gifting. NA: That’s a really good question. This year, we’re turning 375 years old as a company. We are one of the oldest Western European companies. We are the oldest company in Finland, and also the longest exchange-listed company in Finland. So then how do you [future-proof] your heritage brands? You have uniqueness, you have the craftsmanship. How do you stay relevant and renew yourself? Well, for us, it starts with our purpose. We say our purpose is pioneering design. And when you are a pioneer, it really means that you push the boundaries all the time. You’re trying new things. You’re curious, but that also means that you’re allowed to fail because you can’t be a pioneer if you don’t fail now and then. You fail and you learn, and then you go forward.  But then, we stay relevant by having a creative director in all our brands, and they set the north star. Where do we want to go? What is the creative language? And they build collections around that. They might have a lot of unique pieces, and in that sense, bring attention while, of course, we also have a core collection. But [we are] all the time renewing ourselves. You can’t be heritage and just stay and do the same things.  For your question about wedding gifts and engagement gifts, we actually have moved away from that because we see that consumers are buying much more for themselves; they want to invest in themselves and their own enjoyment at home. Of course, gifting is still very big for us. Christmas is huge. IR: Let’s chat about Christmas. Obviously it’s huge for retailers, what brands in the Fiskars portfolio perform well in this period? And how does the Fiskars business approach the peak periods, globally and locally? NA: When we talk about Christmas, it’s relevant for all the brands. Of course, the Fiskars brand is more [about] gardening. Christmas follows the gardening seasons [in the northern hemisphere], so gardening may not always be the big gifting product. But even in Fiskars, we have Christmas collections coming out – unique, fantastic decorating pieces. From this gifting perspective, [we are always thinking] how we can help fans of our brands and talk more about lifestyle so that we can expand. For example, this Christmas, we are launching Royal Copenhagen, and we’re also launching textiles. How can we surround the consumer? How can we make it a lifestyle brand, and then, when you love the brand, what are the different products or occasions the consumer wants to use the brand in? IR: What sort of textiles are you entering into? NA: With Royal Copenhagen, for Christmas, this will be tablecloths and napkins. [With] another brand, Moomin, we’ve gone well into textiles. Two years ago, we had zero textiles, and today it’s already 20 per cent of the mix – it’s bedroom, bathroom and kitchen textiles.  Consumers like to shop for something new from the range if they have everything already. IR: This question leans more towards the premium brands. What’s the retail strategy in Australia? NA: First, as a group, direct-to-consumer is the key, except Fiskars, which we sell mostly through Bunnings and so on. But DTC is strategically our focus globally. And that means omnichannel. Our own stores and e-commerce are hand in hand, [that is how the] consumer sees it. If I jump to China, for example, we open a new store every month. We just opened in September a Georg Jensen jewellery store in Shenzhen. So DTC is extremely important to us, but we have brands that are more suited for the department store or the big-box players like Bunnings. We have a very clear channel strategy by brand. IR: Georg Jensen was acquired in 2023 by Fiskars. In the past 12 months, what has Fiskars done with the brand? And what was the intention of the group when acquiring the business? NA: This is a really good question. We bought it on October 1, 2023, so exactly one year ago. And when we bought Georg Jensen, we were attracted to it because it just amplifies our own strategy. Georg Jensen is DTC. It’s luxury, and it also has huge potential in our strategic core markets, the US and China, so it was spot on the strategy. In the first nine months after the acquisition, we integrated it, which meant that we focused quite a lot on the areas where we had duplicates. For example, Salesforce, we had a lot of duplicates there. [We did] a lot of work on sourcing, where we could bring the breadth of Fiskars, or the scale of Fiskars, to drive sourcing. Going forward, I think it comes down again to the power of investment into DTC. We have a whole offering of luxury brands, so when we go to the shopping mall, we already have quite a few stores. It is much easier to negotiate premium locations in the shopping mall because we have the breadth of the portfolio. IR: To clarify, Georg Jensen is the first fashion/jewellery brand hybrid in the Fiskars portfolio? NA: It is, although Wedgwood and Waterford have historically been known for their jewellery. So we’ve had it in the past, but never as significantly as Georg Jensen. So I think that’s also a fantastic new add-on for us, to be in a new category of jewellery. IR: I want to circle back to what you mentioned before about all of the Group’s brands having creative directors. That’s quite similar to luxury fashion houses. What was the thinking behind this? NA: We are here because of the brands and the brands are the most important asset we have. How do you nurture and make them relevant for the future? You have to have the creative direction because otherwise, you are just jumping from place to place. You have to have the North Star. It was a conscious decision to invest in the creative directors and also attract the fantastic talent that we’ve been able to attract. IR: Where do you foresee the biggest opportunities within the Group’s portfolio, specifically in Australia? NA: If I start on the whole portfolio, we have very clear portfolio roles where we say, ‘Which brands are we going to over-invest in?’ We have only three brands where we say we over-invest and that’s Georg Jensen, Royal Copenhagen and Wedgewood. Over-invest means we over-invest money in the brands, but also that we ensure we have the best talents in these brands because we see the global potential and the performance of the brands is already so good. What does this mean to Australia? Of course, Georg Jensen is already big here, but we’ll continue to focus on them and invest in these brands. IR: That’s a term I’ve never heard before; how do you contextualise the term over-investing? NA: It’s everything, it’s everything. We have roughly 20 active brands, and when we say over-invest…If I take, for example, AI, which brands get the AI pilot? It’s these brands. Which brands get more marketing money? It’s these brands. Who gets more R&D? It’s these brands. So it’s every aspect. It’s not only marketing but everything.  IR: What is the impact you want to have at the Fiskars Group? NA: ​​What drives me is the potential. I see huge potential still in the brands. And I also see potential in our teams. Seeing the team succeed is a huge joy. But what drives me is to see the potential of the brands and make sure they are relevant tomorrow. So what is a legacy? That you leave behind a much healthier portfolio of brands that are much more loved globally. I think that’s really important. And then finally, sustainability. Sustainability is at the core of everything we do. Because that’s the future. IR:​​ What’s happening at the Fiskars Group sustainability-wise?NA: Consumers trust our brand, so we have to do what’s right so they don’t need to research themselves or look into this. They just know that we are doing the right thing. How can we ensure that we burden the planet the least? When we started this, maybe two years ago, only 3 per cent of our net sales were in recycled products. Today it’s 24 per cent, so by having high ambitions, we really deliver and fast. We do this not only in jewellery but also in our stainless-steel products, in the Fiskars scissors [where we are looking at] how we can replace the plastic, recycle glass and so on.