Fraser Live: Three score years and twenty
There's not much fun in being 80 years old - unless you happen to be textile wholesaler Martin & Savage which was born in 1928.
At a time when textile wholesaling is suffering because of the shrinkage of local garment manufacturing, M&S's survival for 80 years is a celebration. And there's still a Tinworth at the helm in the person of David, son of the late and revered John Tinworth.
When I first visited M&S in Sydney it was down the sloping end of Pitt Street. In 1984 the owners took a deep breath and bought their own building in Waterloo - from where the company still operates.
"People in the trade didn't appreciate the sacrifice my father and others made for that purchase," David says. "The money they'd earned out of the company had to go back in, and then some. It was a struggle. Dad saw it as our personal Waterloo, a place we could make our last stand, if it ever came to that."
It certainly hasn't come to that. The company is not doing the turnover it once did, but has tailored its business to shorter runs, high fashion fabrics and a percentage of deliveries to offshore factories. Unlike some of its competitors, M&S has not dabbled in garments to supplement its textile business. It remains true to the tradition of Australian textile wholesaling.
Supre staying
My favourite tweenies chain, Supre, announced it was moving out of the former Gowings retail space on the corner of George and Market Streets, Sydney. Now it says (big sign in the window) that it's staying after all, but sharing the space with another trade stalwart, Spotlight.
Long regarded as the best retail position in the city, the Gowings rent must be correspondingly stratospheric. In the present economic conditions it is difficult to imagine a tenant that could sell goods that were dear enough and do it fast enough to reach the high-tide mark of the rent - to say nothing of minor items like buying the goods paying staff.
The problem with a store like Supre is that its average unit price is modest - even if the turnover of garments is humming along. I'd guess that Hans and family will now concentrate on higher margin items and leave the cheapies to their lower rent stores.
Spotlight will face a similar dilemma. While it carries some exotic piecegoods at high prices, you can buy a pin or a button for a few cents. You'd have to sell items like that by the pallet to make money. The smaller Spotlight space afforded by a couple of Supre floors will provide a legitimate excuse for not having enough room for cheap stuff.
You may recall the big Home Yardage store that used to be just around the corner in York Street It was quite successful in cut length fabrics and other softgoods but closed a couple of years ago when the lease ran out and owner Paul Fudge thought he'd have a go at mining in Queensland instead.
Have a go was right. He is now worth hundreds of millions of dollars after securing leases in the middle of a rich LPG field.
Smouhaha brouhaha
The official administration of the once grand Smouha textile wholesale business and its recent acquisition, Hill Textiles, is causing more anguish than just among its creditors. Other textile wholesalers are wondering whether there is a now a fundamental flaw in their kind of business.
Obviously, the main difficulty is the diminishing number of garment customers still manufacturing in Australia. There are still quite a number, mind you, but in terms of fabric volume they are tiddlers, and in terms of payment they mostly range between slow and never.
Wholesalers and the fashion labels they service both have to accept that there is a ceiling on volume, short of Asian factories sinking into the sea. We're in the world of styling premature ejaculation and we have to make the best of it.
Some people blame the enviable lifestyle of Philip and Lisa for Smouha's trouble but there is no evidence yet of that. Certainly they've tired some other ventures but finished up with under-performing race horses, a boutique brewery and lavender farm - to name a few. If any of those had fired, we all be saying what a clever boy was Phillip.
Meanwhile back with the administrator, St George Bank is crying crocodile tears as it stands to lose at least $15 million. At the first creditors meeting shortly before April Fool's Day there was not much in the way of detail forthcoming, but the administrator seemed adamant that the owners of the company would not be given it back to run. The question now is, who would buy a wounded and limping Smouha Textiles?