Why the founder of Culture Kings wants retailers to sell with emotion and magic

Culture Kings is an Australian retail phenomenon, what started as a Carrara market stall in 2008 evolved into an international retailer being listed on the stock exchange with a $600 million valuation. 

Founder and CEO Simon Beard took to the stage at Retail Fest 2024 in the Gold Coast, the city where it all started for him, to share what he refers to as the art of retail.

For Beard, retail should go beyond the product and instead be approached as a form of theatre that creates magic, generates connection and evokes emotion for consumers – what he calls “retailtainment”.

 Consumers buy with emotion

The key lesson Beard took from the market stalls all the way to the stock exchange was that “people buy with emotion and then justify with logic”.

Culture Kings drives desirability for its products by creating a brand that is bigger than any item in its catalogue that its customers are desperate to buy into, even if it’s just a cap.

Beard cited Louis Vuitton as a prime example of this phenomenon, a huge percentage of their profits comes from selling wallets at a lower price point yet its advertisements almost exclusively feature luxury bags at a luxury price point.

To execute this in reality for a brand Beard said that this effect can’t be achieved if retailers are trying to sell to everyone, “If you try to sell to everyone, you sell to no one”.

“If you try and sit lukewarm in the middle, so often you’ll end up in no man’s land – People do not care about your brand,” explained Beard.

Culture Kings is exceptionally clear in who its target demographic is and it utilises every touch point at its disposal to connect with them; experiential stores, creative advertisements, engaging socials and trendy products.

“The thing I understood is to be able to get someone to love your brand, some people are going to dislike it or even hate it and that is fine,” stated Beard.

Beard wanted Culture Kings stores to leave a lasting impression so that when consumers were met with a Facebook advertisement later they not only remembered the brand but had an emotional response recalling their earlier in-store experience.

“We leverage our stores to build our brand, create the theatre of emotion and leverage that through online,” said Beard.

“Stores that have the true Disneyland magical experience of fashion, sport, music and pop culture brought all together,” he added.

It is Beard’s awareness and investment in emotional experiences that have built the Culture Kings empire that has created magic moments for the brand’s customers and teammates.

The vibe sets the culture 

The entire Culture Kings team had to buy into the “magic moment” purpose in order to effectively scale it worldwide.

“We’re here to light the customer up: When they walk in we’re going to hit them with this high energy pace, high warmth and confident greeting. We’re going to connect, upsell and link emotion to the product,” said Beard.

“So when they wear it, they’re not going to walk out of the store – they are going to have a cape on their back and they are going to fly,” he added.

Culture Kings infamously paid Drake $250,000 in a duffel bag to take photos in-store with customers, a decision which was motivated by emotion and magic, not economic sense.

But investing in these magic moments is how Beard manufactured an emotional atmosphere within a retail store, or what he commonly refers to as a “vibe”, because for Culture Kings culture is king.

“This is one of the things I really learned, if you’re the leader of a team or a business it is your job to set the culture and you cannot blame it on the team – you have to set it consciously and drive it there,” explained Beard.

Beard places great emphasis on team motivation and training to ensure every customer’s in-store experience is a memorable one.

Culture is more than the brand name, it is the purpose that has separated Beard’s Culture Kings from the competition in the retail industry.  

“Create the brand, the emotion, the resonance, break [consumers] patterns so they remember you,” concluded Beard.

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