Fraser Live: Designers: export at thy peril

IF I had all the money that has been lost by Australian clothing companies trying to crack the export market over the past 30 years I’d be seriously rich.

Yet we still hear the clarion call, often blown by Austrade or our fashion fair organisers, that Australia has something to offer the world in innovative fashion. As a general rule, it doesn’t.

Before you angrily disagree with me I concede that there are exceptions.

One is the sale overseas of iconic Australian swim and surfwear. As one observer put it recently, “we know how to go to the beach”. Seafolly exports its sexy swimwear to many countries, as does Billabong, Rip Curl and Quicksilver. Just how much money these companies make out of export is never clear, but you can’t deny their longevity as exporters.

There are a few other intrinsically Australian products that are exportable too, such as Driza Bone coats and Akubra hats, but they fall into the category of novel ethnic utility rather than fashion.

The fashion labels that we do export, such as Akira, Jayson Brunsdon and Sass & Bide, all have trouble in maintaining sustainable export businesses. And the numerous designer labels that preceded them in export have been consigned to history. While there is often a well justified fanfare when a world-famous US or European store places an order with an Australian designer, continuation is the tricky bit.

I’m not knocking, for one minute, the skill of labels such as these; they are among our best – our best, not the world’s best. On the world stage they have little designer cred. They come from a place down under that, in many ways, is ho-hum about fashion.

I’m not saying that overseas buyers do not come here and sometimes place orders with our designers. But even with export incentives and SIP rebates, the profit is rarely worth the trouble. Only designers who want their international ego fanned at the expense of profits should bother with export.

I‘d love to be proved wrong but I can’t help remembering the struggles and final capitulation of labels like Country Road, Prue Acton and Jill Fitzsimon – all screaming successes in Australia but as exporters they had short, painful lives.

Of course, my misery-guts pronouncements will not stop the next bright young designer labels from trying to conquer New York, London or Paris. If I can’t stop them before they start, then I’d counsel them as follows:

1. Don’t open an overseas office with your name over the door and your employees inside. That will start a money bonfire.

2. Set aside a budget you can afford for export and do not exceed it. Make export a separate company division so that you can see the wood from the trees. Walk away when the budget has been used up. Don’t try just one more season.

3. Don’t bend over backwards to do a special run or an uneconomical minimum to please an overseas buyer.  It never pays off.

4. Be careful with costings for export. Freight, currency fluctuations and various agents fees can turn into monsters.

5. Don’t sell on some airy-fairy pay-later scheme. Deal only in FOB with payment before shipment.

6. Don’t be fooled into advertising in the European glossy magazines. It won’t do a damn bit of good for you, apart from boosting your ego and giving you something to show your mother.

7. Be prepared for unjustifiable cancellations. Have a plan B ready to dispose of the unwanted goods.

8. Take tiny steps. A big order from overseas might be exciting but it could ruin a small company if something goes wrong.

Hattams is at ’em

One of the more endearing aspects of old-fashioned strip shopping is that every now and then you come across a shop that is frozen in time, yet still able to generate enough business to survive.

I stumbled across one when I went to Melbourne recently and came upon Hattams, quite possibly the oldest menswear store in Australia.

Hattams was once a group of 30 stores in and around Melbourne. It began life 130 years ago and the last surviving store, in Elsternwick, has been in the same place for 80 years.

One could be forgiven for thinking that some of the original stock was there too, but that would be to underestimate the merchandising know-how of Ian Hattam, the only fourth-generation member of the family still involved in the business. Without intending to, he passively dispenses the universal message: know your market.

Hattams can’t be too cheap, or too young, or too fashionable. Rather, it excels in the middle of the cake where its older, habitual customers come in for restful choices of clothes that melt into the crowd.