to now sit alongside fellow Accent Group- owned footwear brands, Timberland and Platypus, on the basement level of the shopping complex. Accent confirmed to Inside Retail PREMIUM in January it would take over the leases of eight Bing, Harris & Co standalone stores, seven in NZ and one in Australia at Emporium, Melbourne, following the closure of the chain. Matt Hapgood, GM retail at Accent Group/Platypus Shoes, told Inside Retail PREMIUM eight new Skechers store will open this calendar year, taking its store count to around 40 by the end of 2015. Accent also anticipates Skechers’ first online store to be live within the next 12 months. “[Emporium] is going to give us our first true CBD location in an Australian city. We haven’t had a city location in either Sydney or Melbourne, and that’s probably the most exciting thing for us outside of the new design,” Hapgood said. “By the end of the year we will have 40 trading stores and we believe the model can easily sustain close to 50 to 60 stores in Australia in the next two years. Over the next 24 months, if we’re not at 50 stores we will be very close to it.”