ango & Juliette. The family also own Australia’s largest online footwear pureplay, Styletread, purchasing the business from founders, Mark Rowland and Bjorn Behrendt, in 2013. Wanted, which is understood to be worth around $20 million, like the Munro Family Group was a family-owned and operated business prior to its sale. The Stephens family opened the first store in Sydney’s Town Hall Arcade in 1979 under original name, Sacopelle. The acquisition of the fashion forward footwear chain will see the Munro’s internal operations expand from 200 employees to more than 400 staff. Long serving Wanted MD, Jane Jones, will remain with the company for a transitional period, understood to be around three to six months, with Jay Munro to head the business as director following Jones’ departure. Jay Munro, incoming director of Wanted Shoes, says he doesn’t intend to close any existing Wanted stores in NSW and said sites in Melbourne, where the Munro Family Group is based, have already been marked for Wanted’s interstate debut. “We really think bricks and mortar has a big future. We’re planning to come to Melbourne straight away and we already have a couple of sites earmarked. We know the Melbourne market and we would like to open at least one [store] in the first six months,” Munro said. The Munros plan to take the business national, mapping between 30 and 40 stores as a total target. New stores will open under a refreshed, more upmarket fitout. “It’s great what they have done, and it has served them well, but we think we can bring it to that next level. It’s not going to be drastically different. We’re not there to reinvent the wheel, we just want to bring it up to 2015,” Munro said. Last year Wanted launched its first self titled footwear collection, with private labels now an area of focus for the new owners. Wanted already stocks Munro-owned brands such as Mollini and Django & Juliette, however, Munro says it won’t significantly increase these brands’ presences in Wanted stores. Wanted’s pricepoints, which range from around $50 to $300, are also being re-evaluated. “They have put a cap on the price that they think they can sells shoes at, but we think we don’t need that cap. We think [Wanted] can sell higher priced goods, but that doesn’t mean we’re going to change what they currently do. We just think we can add another pricepoint or two higher.” He says longer term the company will look to integrate its stores and brands on multiple platforms, including Styletread. This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 2038. To subscribe, click here.