by Emporium, Melbourne. The menswear brand’s arrival to Australia is part of joint venture with Oroton Group. In August 2013, the luxury group signed a 10 year group venture, following the severing of the company’s local partnership with Ralph Lauren, which had previously made up of around 45 per cent of the group’s sales.   In October 2013, Oroton confirmed to Inside Retail PREMIUM it had also secured a local licensing agreement with Gap Inc, taking the reins from former licensee, Busby Holdings. As part of the deal Oroton was given rights to develop sister brand, Banana Republic, in Australian with an option to also develop value retailer, Old Navy. Brooks Brothers’ Sydney flagship, located on Martin Pl, unofficially opened its doors just under a month ago, with Andy Lew, MD of Asia Pacific, Brooks Brothers, saying the store had already been well received by the local market. “We’re confident that consumers are voting for us,” Lew told Inside Retail PREMIUM. Next stop for the brand is Brisbane, where it will open a standalone store next week at Indooroopilly Shopping Centre. Lew says following the opening of Brisbane the retailer will put the brakes on its aggressive expansion. “After [Brisbane] we’re probably going to catch our breath for a little bit. That will make it 13 locations that we have in Australia. We had a very aggressive launch plan, both with our David  Jones locations, and standalone stores so now we want to catch our breath,” Lew said. “We want to learn from our customers that we already have and start building new ones. We’ll let the customers guide as as to where other opportunities there are for us in other capital cities. Lew says freestanding stores are being considered for Perth and Adelaide, where it already operates David Jones concessions, for 2015. “We want to have freestanding stores in Perth and Adelaide too but we’ll just see how the concessions developed and then we’ll make our decision. We’re looking at real estate but haven’t found anything that makes sense.” Brooks Brothers also has two outlet stores in Sydney’s Homebush and Essendon in Melbourne.  It has also had a soft launch for its local online store, which Lew says is still “working out the kinks”. “It’s a soft launch so I think we still have customers that are still going to the global site as we’re working out some of the kinks of the operations and so fourth. Once we get those in operations then we’ll divert them directly to each site, if you’re an Australian consumer you come straight to our site with a very similar offer.” According to Lew, he sees scope for between 35 and 50 point of sale locations in total for Brooks Brothers Australia, earmarking up to three standalone stores for both Sydney and Melbourne. “Hopefully we could have between 10 and 15 standalone stores, with between two and three in the main cities. I think Bondi could be another location for the brand. For outlets, I would say there’s about five good centres that we could see the brand in. We can also get creative with our concession offering – we can do menswear, womenswear, or even launch a tailoring service instore.” A store in New Zealand is also part of Brooks Brothers’ five year business plan, says Lew. “It’s in our plans to have a store in the next five years, we have a following there already.”