When I got the opportunity to work in retail I felt very comfortable with customers, I felt like it was just a place I understood”

A cave-like concrete store, that spreads across 80 square metres in Melbourne’s Little Bourke Street, is exactly what it looks like – futuristic, new and innovative… the next generation retail model. In a few words, it’s an online store that you can walk into. And it’s as exclusive as its Melbourne CBD location.
Sneakerboy is a sneakers only store, that deals with luxury brands, the likes of Saint Laurent, Balenciaga and Givenchy, aimed at the new and emerging generation of luxury customers.
The entrepreneurial person behind it, who has been making headlines in the last months of 2013 with the opening of three Sneakerboy stores in Sydney in Melbourne, is an acclaimed menswear buyer turned creative director, Chris Kyvetos.
For the Melbourne born Greek Italian, Chris’ first high school job – at the established store of high fashion retailer Cose Ipanema, in Collins Street – was his step into the world of high end fashion.
At only 18, he secured a job as an assistant menswear buyer for the company, then with five stores nationally, that carried labels like Jean Paul Gaultier.
“It was just something I was always interested in,” says Chris. “When I got the opportunity to work in retail I felt very comfortable with customers, I felt like it was just a place I understood.”
Sydney-based high fashion boutique Assin followed for the next eight years. Now an experienced menswear buyer, Chris joined luxury department store Harrolds, introducing contemporary menswear labels and niche urban brands to one of Australia’s leading menswear retailers.
It was at Harrolds that Chris Kyvetos first worked alongside Theo Poulakis, Harrolds co-founder and a long time family friend.
It was the same man who, a few years on, would turn Kyvetos’ vision into reality, backing up the idea and Kyvetos’ brainchild, Sneakerboy.
“When I left Harrolds, I was lucky enough that Theo had the confidence in me to back the idea. He brought in our third partner, financier and our CEO, Guy Obeid.
“Theo and I have a lot of ideas together but in terms of actually implementing anything, Guy really drives the business, and makes everything happen,” the 30-year-old says.
It’s not all about sneakers
From a street-wear symbol and crucial part of hip hop and rock ‘n roll cultures starting from the 1970s, sneakers entered high fashion circles. Million dollar deals were signed by fashion designers and rappers with major sport brands to promote their creations.
A passion of his own, for Chris sneakers represent a modern day icon.
“Every shift, every movement, everything is typified by something; there is an icon of what’s happening. Sneakers are sort of an icon of the change and the broadening of the client base for a lot of luxury brands and retailers. It is, for a young guy, the equivalent of a woman’s handbag, the most iconic thing they wear.”
The movement of luxury brands and retailers orientating themselves towards a new demographic, Chris explains, started with a pivotal Dior Homme show in 2004, and continued with the rise of Riccardo Tisci at Givenchy, Balenciaga’s appointment of Alexander Wang and other “really significant moments in the history of luxury brands”, as Chris defines it.
Established French brands were now more in tune with types of culture different from those luxury was normally associated with. Repositioning of the brand into a new culture – that of street art, the culture of graphic street print – marked a great change in luxury brands.
Amid the 80 square metres of only sneakers on display in its Melbourne store and the name Sneakerboy, Chris Kyvetos says it’s not all about sneakers.
“It’s funny, because I guess it looks like and it sounds like and it does everything like it’s all about sneakers. But it was actually more about a movement in luxury fashion that I felt was happening for quite a long time.
“You have to have an icon – being the sneaker in this case – and then build around that. And the name Sneakerboy is less literally about sneakers, it’s more about the person who wears them. And in luxury fashion now, you have a whole market of sneakerboys – who are students or people who have not previously been customers of luxury fashion. The name is about them – not about sneakers,” Chris tells Neos Kosmos.
The movement of luxury brands towards a new demographic is, as Chris understands it, about the emergence of a new luxury customer and new market.
“I try to refrain from saying ‘younger customers’, because it’s not necessarily about an age demographic. But, with the rise of the east and the rise of China, the fact is there is a whole new market.
“It has led the way, but it’s not the only reason. It’s also about luxury brands becoming more in tune with wider cultures than was the case previously. With that came big changes in a lot of established luxury retail brands, who started to change their image towards this new culture in luxury fashion.”
And with years of experience in luxury fashion, Chris Kyvetos felt there was no luxury retail brand that was built specifically for that market. There were a lot of brands that have changed themselves, but no one that was specifically built for the new market. That’s how Sneakerboy was born.
Retail model for a digital age
When you have the opportunity to start something from the beginning, Chris explains, you tailor it for a new market, for a new generation of customer. It was the thought that brought the Sneakerboy trio to rethink what the new market was about.
“It sort of brought us to think how we should actually deliver the commerce side of the business, not only the creative side. Is the efficiency of online killing traditional retail? Will physical retail actually survive the efficiency of the online; will it be sought for in 15 years time?”
The answer was a retail model for the digital age that would successfully blend the tactility and the purity of retail with the efficiency of the internet.
Sneakerboy is your physical online store, without counter or retail store inventory, but with benefits for both the customer and the retailer.
“If we were to be able to offer a range of products to compete with online retailers, our store would have to be 140 or 160 square metres.
“The cost of real estate in places like the CBD in Sydney and Melbourne, you effectively take $6,000 a metre to store stock. Why would you pay 6,000 per metre for storage, when you can store in some place in Hong Kong, the way the online retailers do, which is why they have a price advantage over traditional retailers?” Chris explains.
Of his innovative retail model, that has been credited as a ‘luxury retail revolution’, Chris says that it provides customer experience, walking into the store, interaction with products, with people – that is not possible in traditional online shopping.
“You can’t shop socially online, you can’t try something before you buy it. These are the basics of the retail store that the efficiency of online will never change.
“We took the very basics of retail – which were tangibility in terms of brand and product interaction – and we tried to combine that with the efficiency of the online – so called centralised inventory. In multi-site retail you have an issue called ‘inventory inefficiency’ which means that you’ve got stock in multiple places, where you may not necessarily need it. Your customer may be in Westfield, and his size might be in Melbourne. That’s a sort of inventory inefficiency that doesn’t happen online.”
What this theory meant in the case of Melbourne’s Sneakerboy is that out of 80 square metres, 77 were used as floor space, displaying a range of products comparable to the big online stores.
“All of a sudden we are in a position where by centralised inventory and offsite storage, we have the ability to compete in terms of range with online retailers. The revolutionary business is structured in a way that its customers can come in, talk to a salesperson, try the product on and then order it from the store’s iPod or their own device, through the Sneakerboy app. It gets delivered to them within 3-5 days from Hong Kong, the way it would if they were buying something from an online store.”
For more information about Sneakerboy stores, visit www.sneakerboy.com