within three to four years. Perfect Potion is now trialling new sites in Japan. “The good thing is that these centres are allowing us to have a pop up store, which is fantastic. If it works we are going to look at leasing some space,” Battaglia said. Perfect Potion offers ranges of natural aromatherapy and certified organic skincare products. “In Japan, they love the fact the product is organic and green and from Australia. Australian products are very well received,” Battaglia said. “Japan is very exciting even though the economy has been flat. From the retail perspective, it’s retail heaven,” he said. “Employment is high and retail shopping is what people seem to do in their spare time.” The company has also just signed agreements for Hong Kong and Korea. “In Hong Kong they are setting up spaces on the ground floor of department stores, while in Korea it is more of a distribution model,” Battaglia said. Established 24 years ago, the company is based in Brisbane where its manufacturing facility is also located, with all stores are company-owned. The latest store opened on May 6 in Melbourne’s Little Collins St and boasts Perfect Potion’s most recent signature design, introduced by creative director and co-founder, Carolyn Stubbin, which features shop furniture and fittings made from wooden pallets. “We are constantly evolving because we just want to make the customer experience even more amazing,” Battaglia said. The company’s flagship in Sydney’s iconic Queen Victoria Building that sees annual growth of at least five to 10 per cent, features a lot of recycled timber, bamboo flooring and sustainably harvested cedar panelling − also the decor of the Westfield Bondi Junction store. “In the shopping centres they tend to prefer that style and that’s also a very new design – designed only about 12 months ago. Where we can, especially in our street frontage shops, we will probably go with the pallet look,” he said. The company is aiming to have the next shop in Japan be a ‘pallet shop’, depending on the site and location. In Australia the next shop to open should be around July in Sydney’s Newtown. There are potentially three or four more sites in Sydney, as well as sites under negotiation in Cairns Central and Pacific Fair in Queensland. CBD locations and good foot traffic work well for the stores and are always considered when looking at new sites. In the past year, one of the company’s most active and successful sites was its website – the online shop is considered its number two shop after the QVB. April 2015 saw growth of more than 100 per cent on the same month in the previous year. Contributing to this has been more activity in social media and SEO attention. The Perfect Potion demographic falls in the median age group of early 20s to early 40s, with an emphasis on health and wellbeing. “They are very socially aware; they are very active online users,” Battaglia said. Perfect Potion holds instore events, including regular workshops in each state, which are promoted online. May’s DIY skincare workshop booked out within a couple of days. The main customer is what the business refers to as ‘the socially aware consumer’. “We have come up with the term ‘green goddess’,” Battaglia said. “We don’t do any green washing, our products are certified natural with a very strict European standard and organic certification. Because we actually manufacture all the products ourselves, we can maintain that quality of our products.” Each year, Perfect Potion introduces around 10 new products spread over its range, including body care, essential oil blends, haircare, and skincare. The skincare range is its number one product. “We have some amazing skincare that over the years have become bestsellers and it’s wonderful to see mums coming in with their daughters, introducing them to our range of products,” Battaglia said. This story first appeared in Inside Retail PREMIUM issue 2046. To subscribe, click here.