“LookDepot was founded back in 2014 as the Australasian exclusive channel partner for StyleShoots technology and visual retailing software MockShop.
With a young family, a clear business plan and a certain degree of naivety, we went on this journey to build the business from New Zealand knowing our largest market at that time, for our target big box fashion and apparel retail market, was demonciled for the most part in Australia. Regular travel to and from Australia meant we established key partnerships and had a good understanding of our brand and our customer. Opening a showroom in Australia was always on our radar, timings were set for 2019 /2020 – we were good to go!
The pandemic in 2020 threw us a curveball. Doubt set in, uncertainty brought a lack of assurance, including how our business would traverse through so many unknowns. I thought it was all a little too risky to move into a market that I couldn’t visit or go to see any of our customers or prospects. We could, however, see a significant spike of growth in ecommerce – that supported our business model and gave us the steely resolve to keep our goals in sight. Closed borders also forced us to fast track our Australian team. We established our core support team, a technical support manager based in Melbourne who runs all our installations and is able to support our customers and the continuous reliability of the machines across the country. We also have client service support and sales based in Sydney.