Mecca Cosmetica

Most beauty retailers stock the big luxury brands and earn a standard wholesale margin on each sale. Australia's largest prestige beauty retailer did something different. It launched its own house brand. Mecca was founded by Joe Horgan in Melbourne in 1997. Initially as a single store, reselling a curated list of imported prestige beauty brands. Over the following two decades, Mecca expanded into more than 110 stores across Australia and New Zealand, becoming the dominant prestige beauty retailer in the region. In 2001, still relatively early in the company's life, Horgan launched Mecca Cosmetica as an in-house brand, priced below the luxury brands on the same shelves, sold only through Mecca stores. A standard retailer earns roughly 30 to 40 cents on each dollar of wholesale luxury product sold.