How Mecca 3000 captures Melbourne’s unique spirit 

Greece’s ancient ruins and Mecca’s Bourke Street flagship have more in common than you might think.

Throughout the ages – from the world’s first marketplace to general stores, department stores, shopping malls, big boxes, ecommerce, and beyond – retail has been a balance of three things: convenience, service and enjoyment.

But Mecca’s glittering new retail haven exemplifies a fourth pillar – brand.

Mecca 3000 is a three-storey, immersive environment that reinvents the traditional components of retail through the modern lens of the Mecca brand.

Let’s step through Mecca’s masterclass on all four pillars of the retail quadfecta.

Reimagine the marketplace

For true convenience, there is online shopping, and Mecca’s free shipping for orders over $25 with same-day delivery options satisfy the couch-dwellers. But the flagship delivers here, too. Like the ancient Greek Agora, it is a one-stop shop for multiple products and services.

The core offering of beauty and perfume is now complemented by high-end adjacent offers like hair and nail salons, a florist, naturopath, jewellery store, holistic apothecary and café – often brands with their own strong local following. It’s a carefully curated modern marketplace, based on old principles of convenience and discovery.

Both high and low touch service

Global trends show a divergence in best-in-class service. Brands are betting on either high- or low-touch experiences. While some retailers show you how well they know and serve you, through personalised offers, geo-targeting, loyalty programs and a fully connected experience, others are removing the need to talk to a person altogether, with AI digital assistants and stores with no checkouts.

Mecca’s approach is to let shoppers choose, mirroring the brand’s customer-centricity. In a single environment, there are seamless high and low-touch service options.

For some, it’s an in-and-out trip from the ground-floor aisles to the checkout.

For others, it’s a self-guided tour of the building – abundant, beautifully worded information cards enable customers to navigate the shelves on their own. 

Here, the brand is generous in sharing its expertise. The cards offer detailed product descriptions or audience insight to boost confidence in the trickiest categories or when shopping for the most difficult gift recipients. The solo adventure option is further supported by store maps at the entrance and concierge desks on all floors.

And for high-touch service, there are consultation desks, private booths, professional appointments and highly personalised experiences on offer.  

A fresh invitation to explore and play

Mecca 3000 is a return to the love of shopping, where a sense of enjoyment, whimsy and adventure is more important than the final purchase. It’s an ethos derived from the original occupant of the building. One hundred fifty years ago, a sign in the Cole’s Book Arcade window stated, “Read for as long as you like – nobody asked to buy.”

The Cole’s Arcade once filled the space between Bourke Street and Little Collins Street with a funhouse of optical illusions, toy stores, music boxes and live monkeys. A similar appreciation of all things fantastical is evident in the store today.

Beauty fans will recognise the brightly lit carousel, which features in many Mecca stores, in the brand’s words, as a visual cue for discovery and play. But at this location, it is humbled by more innovative interactions, namely the Perfumeria and Scentsorium. The latter is as futuristic as it sounds, inviting shoppers to smell tech-enhanced diffusers to establish a shortlist of perfume options.

On the lo-fi end, everyday products sit alongside wooden blocks with quotes from art and literature – elevating simple, rational browsing into a sensory, emotive experience.

And there are in-store-only experiences that add to the fun: engraving, calligraphy, custom gift wrapping, and merchandise available only in the Bourke Street store.

An immersive brand experience

We can’t overlook the fact that there are two brands on show within the space – Brand Mecca and Brand Melbourne.

Brand Melbourne is built on pillars of quality, sophistication and creativity. It has long relied on the retail sector (alongside hospitality) to embody these values and fuel Melbourne’s pride and identity. Mecca is today’s flag carrier. A manifestation of the city’s creativity, curiosity and culture of quality.

And Brand Mecca leans on Brand Melbourne right back, leveraging the city’s reputation as a special retail destination.

Founder Jo Horgan describes Mecca 3000 as a love letter to the city that launched the brand. And an appreciation of Melbourne city runs from the outside in.

Despite an extensive (and rumoured $50 million) renovation, the laneway entrance has preserved the street art on the external walls, ingraining the brand with Melbourne culture. And prioritising laneway signage shows an appreciation of the city’s unique layout and shopping behaviour.

From within, the heritage aspects of the building have been warmly embraced. The iconic windows are given the space and presence to shine over the top floor, and photographs of the street façade even feature on the custom merchandise.

These integrations present the brand as self-aware, creative and tapped into the culture, not as simple occupants of a building.

As for the interior, it is a shining example of visual branding with interest – cohesive but creative. There are core elements, such as a bespoke typeface commissioned specifically for the Bourke Street store, that ground the space in some consistency. The rest is layer upon layer of rich design styles and different materials. These often disrupt established conventions, like the three-storey hanging light fixture that replaces directional escalator signage.  

Adding to the playful experience are elements that are literally brought to life. Things move. Art pieces rotate, dynamic imagery drips and bubbles, screens feature scrolling text stories or are already sensory, living things, like food, plants and flowers.

The overall result is an ever-changing environment that invites you back to explore again and again.

The newest, oldest retail wonderland

In an age where digital convenience has come to rule the retail mix, Mecca 3000 shows how a different kind of convenience and multiple layers of service can work hand in hand with enjoyment, excitement and discovery. It’s a masterclass in telling a brand story at every touchpoint, and a signal that the future of retail might just look a lot like its past.

Hayley Read is a senior strategy consultant at branding agency Principals.

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