Fraser live
Or rather, let me tell you what recently retired coat king, Leonard Karpin, has to say about the coat and jacket business.
By way of background, Leonard went straight from school, in the early '50s, into his father Sam's Sydney coat and jacket business which had been started by Sam's father Mark Yarmovsky more than a century ago. So you could say that Leonard undoubtedly had the coat gene.
Leonard became managing director of the business when Sam retired in the mid 1970's.
Yarmovsky ran the brands Junior Look, Urban Tailor and Marena Carlei. There was a company name change in 2002 to Textile Cover and today the business is wholly owned by Leonard's son-in-law Andrew Zielinski. It operates as a manufacturer out of Melbourne and has some retail factory outlets around Australia called The Paddington Coat Factory.
So much for the history; now for the wisdom.
The business of coats, Leonard says, has little in common with the business of other fashion garments. Style cycles of coats span years rather than seasons or part-seasons as they do in other fashion outerwear. The three best sellers in 2005 were in styles five-years-old. A coat style that establishes itself strongly this year can therefore be re-presented well into the future, maybe with a change of button or trim. This is because consumers also see the life of their coat as long term. Women will clear their wardrobe of dresses or separates because they are sick of them or because they are dated, but coats are often only outward bound to St Vinnies because the moths have feasted on them.
Since it is for long-term garments, coat styling is not radical. Leonard says the balance in a range would be about 80 per cent of what he calls 'basic' with 20 per cent customer bait. Colours do not vary much either. The vast majority are in black or charcoal, followed by camel, red, navy and a couple of other minority colours.
Retailers, these days especially, are frightened to stock up on new season coats because of the high unit cost and the terrifying prospect of cold weather forgetting to arrive in winter. Like umbrella sales responding to rain, coat sales respond to cold. So retailers will have a showy but shallow stock to open winter and then wait for a change in the weather. This is where the professional, specialist coat manufacturer plies his trade. Because there is little risk in styling or colour, he will carry stocks of winter coats backed by an even bigger stock of fabrics. If the seasonal weather is against him, he will keep the stock for next year. This, of course, requires plenty of space and plenty of dollars.
But if the weather is cold, the retailer suddenly becomes the coat supplier's newest best friend, laden with orders. Those orders can be fulfilled, to a degree, from stocks of finished coats, but the trick is to be able to turn the fabric stock into garment stock quickly - which can only be achieved by making locally. In Leonard's case, that meant having in-house cutting and some machining - plus the knowledge of where to get contract sewing done in a hurry. In 2006, 50 per cent of Textile Cover's coats were still made in Australia. Although that will invariably slide towards imports, the fact is that better end retailers will pay more for an established brand, made in Australia and speedily delivered.
Knowing what to make and when, is the intuition of the successful coat manufacturer like Leonard Karpin. It can't be learned from any school, and some people could never learn it after 20 years in a clothing business. Either you've got it or you haven't.
Likewise, a good retail coat buyer, in Leonard's estimation, is somebody who understands that the consumer wants a garment that will last for several seasons and be compatible with fashion changes in what's worn underneath. The good buyer will make basics look exciting, and maybe sell them on the myth of newness, but will really be appealing to the consumer's need for smart neutrality.
As for Melbourne being the home of coats, that's bunkum, according to Leonard. "Thirty years ago, when the fake fur craze took off my first order came from Barrie & Roberts in Brisbane," he says. "Queensland is a strong coat market."
And his biggest order? I expected him to cast his mind back wistfully to the '60s when fashion ruled, but again I was surprised.
"Three years ago I took an order from Myer for $4 million," he told me.