Last October, Danish design brand Hay opened its flagship Melbourne store courtesy of Australian partner Cult Design.
Since 2002, the Hay brand has been supplying the Danish market with aspirational, bespoke and contemporary designer products – including furniture, glassware, lighting, clothing and accessories – at an attainable price point.
Cult partnered with Hay in 2005 and lunched Hay Sydney in 2015 – the first fully-operating retail store under the Cult brand. The introduction of the first bricks-and-mortar store in Melbourne was slated to coincide with the Danish store’s 20th anniversary.
Cult founder and managing director Richard Munao was confident that the store’s Melbourne location – Fitzroy, an eclectic and bohemian suburb in the city’s inner-north – would fit with the Hay DNA, finding a kindred audience in the neighbourhood’s discerning locals.
Munao said Melbourne was already primed for Hay’s arrival, with many online sales from the Sydney store, once Hay’s sole Australian retail venue, shipped to local buyers. But were those sales indicative of a lasting appetite for the products, or were they “just” a temporary side effect of the city’s long lockdowns?
The exterior is wrapped in a colourful mural by local artist Jasmine Mansbridge.
Image:
Amy Hemmings
“Three months on, and the sales [are] continuing to give Sydney a run for its money,” Munao says.
While the store’s open-plan, apartment-like 160-square-metre layout emulates that of the Copenhagen flagship, Hay has incorporated Melbourne’s design culture into the venue. A vibrant, geometric mural by Jasmine Mansbridge treats passers-by to architectural shapes and vivid colours; those who walk in will spot a custom retail counter, made in collaboration between industrial designer Adam Goodrum and plastic recycling company Defy Design from old milk bottles.
Munao says these city-specific elements evoke the new location yet remain consistent with the Hay brand. “[The store] feels like it’s meant to be in Melbourne, if you know what I mean, versus taking this Danish store and trying to copy and paste,” he says.
Recent releases to the Hay showroom include the Apollo portable mushroom lamp by Studio 0405, the sleek Palissade range of outdoor furniture by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, and the lush Mags soft modular sofa.
Source: Architecture - architectureau
