The founders of the luxury label, Gail Elliott and Joe Coffey, have revealed their second foray will be vastly different to Little Joe's origins as a wholesale business in 2002. The new operation will focus solely on Australian buyers and will be structured to complement what is now the cornerstone of the overhauled business: the Little Joe retail stores.
"The wholesale is an investment," Coffey said. "There's a lot of logistics [associated with wholesale] that act against a nimble retail brand, which is what we want to be.
"We want to be a brand that has new stock in store every month, whether it is Little Joe or non-Little Joe, and that is counter to the wholesale model. But now that we have this timetable established, we can offer both."
The ‘timetable' refers to the couple's detailed plans, overseen by a third party consultant, to have wholesale back in operation for spring/summer 2010. The relaunch comes on the back of a "frustrating" attempt in 2008 to establish a concession outlet in Myer's Sydney City store.
"It wasn't working for a number of reasons," Coffey said. "We're not a big enough company to deal with the infrastructure of Myer. They have extremely generous return policies and we were finding that a lot of our stock was turning up in Tasmania and South Australia as a return four months later."
For more on Little Joe's restructure, pick up a copy of the December 4 edition of Ragtrader magazine.