Genesis showrooms for Melbourne and Sydney
Luxury brand will step up to the plate with a new ‘Genesis Studio’ in each east-coast capital before year’s endGenesis is going ahead with previously unannounced plans to expand its Australian dealer network to three before the end of 2020.
Yong Woo (William) Lee, who heads up Hyundai’s luxury division Genesis, confirmed with Australian journalists in Seoul this week that the two new iterations of ‘Genesis Studio’ will go ahead. Lee, who visited Melbourne and Sydney sees “great potential and opportunity” for the brand in Australia.
“Just six months ago, we opened up what we call the Genesis Studio in downtown Sydney. The purpose is that in Australia... the brand awareness for Genesis is very low, so we have a great car... and we have a great product line-up coming up... but the people there [in Australia] don’t know about it, so we are now making a big presence in the heart of the city...”
The prestige brand has been trading out of a dedicated Sydney premises in Pitt Street. It’s very high-profile frontage boasting 45 million pedestrians passing by every year.
Lee doesn’t anticipate an immediate sales rush from this sole premises, but in a year or two, customers may at least have Genesis on their consideration list when shopping for a new luxury car.
Finding similarly attractive commercial properties in Brisbane and Melbourne has been more difficult – in Melbourne particularly – but Hyundai has now narrowed the search down to a number of possibilities, and the two facilities are expected to open before the end of 2020.
“We are working on more [dealerships] for Melbourne and Brisbane,” Lee said.
“It takes time to find the right place... we are pretty close.”
The Genesis Studio concept is not a traditional style of dealership, Lee stressed. It’s a high-profile bricks and mortar facility to expose the brand, rather than crunch buyers. The Genesis boss explained that he anticipates more vehicles to be bought on line in the future, which is where the Genesis business model diverges from that of parent company Hyundai.
So maybe Infiniti’s strategy was right, but too far ahead of its time.
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