Melbourne’s latest technology store has opened just in time for Christmas, with Telstra today unveiling its new Melbourne Discovery store.

Located at the corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets in the heart of the city, the Melbourne Discovery store redefines the traditional retail store, drawing on an internationally awarded retail design to create a highly interactive and innovative customer experience.

Andrew Coull, Telstra Country Wide Executive Director said the Melbourne Discovery store will showcase world class technology alongside a new level of personalised service for customers.

“We’re really excited to be launching Melbourne Discovery in a city that loves tech, bringing together our world-class technology and innovative service experience for Melbourne customers,” Mr Coull said.

“More than ever, it’s a store that makes a personal connection between people and technology.

“Our team of highly trained experts is dedicated to providing the best in personalised service for our customers. This is supported by the very latest innovations in digital technology that allow customers to seamlessly switch between physical and digital experiences as they explore, discover, try and buy.”

“Today, more than half of our service transactions are digital and so it’s important we provide our customers the choice of when, where and how they interact with us,” he said.

Melbourne Discovery is the next evolution of Telstra’s Discovery store model, which was introduced at Telstra’s Sydney Discovery store at 400 George Street last year. As flagship stores, Discovery stores offer a mix of highly interactive features, digital content displays, and an ever changing range of the latest technology products and services.

Key features unique to Melbourne Discovery include a new tech accessories store, which carries the latest range of wireless speakers, headphones, drones, connected bags, and wearables curated by a team of stylists.

Another unique feature of the store is how it reflects the Melbourne community, with an in-store barista providing free coffee to customers and a pop-up space available to local community organisations.

The pop up space will be managed by The Wise Foundation – a local charity that works to strengthen communities through the development of innovative social businesses. It will talk to customers about the role of social innovation in the community and showcase some of the initiatives they have in place with partners such as the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre and the Mulgrave Famers Market.

Mr Coull said since opening in October 2014, Sydney Discovery was delivering significant increases in sales volumes, the number of customers visiting the store and how customers rated their experience.

“Just in the past week, our Sydney customers had more than 6,000 digital interactions with us in the store – in addition to thousands of face-to-face conversations with our expert team,” he said.

“In addition, we’ve also seen significant interest from the retail industry in the technology and innovations we’ve developed.

“We expect to see these results and more translate to our Melbourne Discovery store.”

Earlier this year, the Sydney Discovery store won the International Design Award from the Internal Retail Design Institute (New York) and the Service Design Award from the Sydney Design Awards.

Some elements of the design, technology and service features of Telstra’s Discovery stores are being implemented in selected stores across Australia, where they suit the local market. To date, Telstra network stores in Macquarie Centre, Macarthur Square and Chatswood in Sydney, Edward St in Brisbane CBD, Casuarina in Darwin and Cranbourne in outer Melbourne have been redeveloped.

About the Store

DEVELOPMENT

• After five months of planning, it took 22 weeks (or 1500 hours) to redevelop the site, with more than 50 people involved in the construction team. More than 90,000 linear metres of cabling has been used to provide power and connectivity.

PEOPLE

• The Melbourne Discovery store employs a team of 75 tech experts who have completed extensive training on customer needs and behaviors, and creating personalised experiences.
• In the past week, the team has been putting the finishes touches to the store and completing a number of ‘dress rehearsals’ to be ready for launch day.
• The team has a high level of gender and ethnic diversity. The team is able to serve customers in Mandarin, Cantonese, French, Spanish, Malay, Hokkien, Japanese, Korean, Hindi, Napali, Newari and Vietnamese, which are among the most popular languages spoken in the Melbourne CBD.
• The team will also curate the Top 10 tech space within the store, providing their personal reviews, tips and recommendations on tech products and services for customers.

FEATURES

• More than 1500 devices are live in the store, showcasing the range of products and services available from Telstra. The store has 36 HD screens around the store offering customers information on products and services.
• Heat mapping cameras (which monitor the flow of customers in store) and a traffic counter at the entry of the store assist with managing service and fine tuning the layout of the store.
• The café is expected to make more than 80 free coffees each day.
• “+61” is the accessories shop within a shop’ and will include everything from connected hand-bags that charge devices to GoPro cameras and drones.

MELBOURNE ENHANCEMENTS

• Tap and Take capabilities have been expanded into more areas of the Melbourne store, providing customers with the ability to tap and take information on more product categories.
• Improved wireless technology in the store enables the store team to reduce transaction and wait times for customers.
• Upgrades have been made to the user interface of interactive technologies such as Tap and Take, Media Fountains and the Device Lab, making them faster and more user friendly.
• Based on the results at Sydney Discovery and the further improvements made to Melbourne Discovery, we expect regular footfall to at least double and up to 5000 customers to come through the store each day during the peak Christmas trading period.
• We also expect Melbourne Discovery to be among our highest performing stores on customer advocacy and sales measures.