When Corporate Culture founder and CEO Richard Munao rang Mark Tuckey in March this year, it was to help a friend of his business acquire a timber dining table. Little did he know that this casual phone call would lead to an acquisition of his own, and one on a very different scale.
During the call, Tuckey confided that after several decades at the helm of his eponymous timber furniture business, and various ups and downs that life had thrown his way, he was ready for a change. Knowing the strength of the Mark Tuckey brand and the quality of its product, and mindful of the importance of preserving local design and manufacturing, Munao started thinking.
The existing Mark Tuckey workshop and showroom in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Thornbury will remain at the core of the business.
Image: Supplied
“Two days later, I rang him back and said, ‘Mark, if you don’t mind sharing the numbers with me, I’ll have a look at it’,” he recalls. “I went out to the factory, met the team and could see that they know very well how to make beautiful product. But I wanted to be sure that we could add value to the Mark Tuckey business, and I felt that we could, particularly through our strength in sales and marketing.”
Less than six months after that initial conversation, the deal was finalised, with the official change of ownership on 1 September. Mark Tuckey is now part of the group that includes Cult Design’s operations in Australia, New Zealand and Singapore, Hay Shops in Sydney and Melbourne, the Cultivated product-stewardship program and the Nau design brand.
Munao’s focus on sales and marketing points to an opportunity for Mark Tuckey to become more active in the commercial furniture sector. But he also flags efficiencies through vertical integration (“making great value products that last a lifetime and taking them to market at a more affordable price”) and bringing the Mark Tuckey team’s manufacturing capabilities to the Nau range (“getting our design network to use that expertise and potentially give it a bit of a fresh look as well”) as benefits that convinced him that the acquisition made sense.
“I’m not taking up something that I need to completely change,” Munao says. “I’m taking on something that hopefully, with an injection of new energy and direction into the future, will turn into an even greater business.”
You can read more about the acquisition at the Cult Design website.
