From a 5000-unit production nightmare to a multimillion dollar Business Dream – Nookie’s Niki Sernack has come a long way in the last six years. Assia Benmedjdoub records her journey.
In 2003, Niki Sernack and Brooke Coleman found each other through the tipsy crowds of a Sydney music festival. They’d met many years before in high school, where Coleman would graduate to pursue a fashion diploma at the respected TAFE NSW Fashion Design Studio (formerly East Sydney Tech) and Sernack moved into sales and hospitality.
“So we came together at Field Day and we’d heard that we were both going to do something with fashion,” Sernack recounts. “Brooke said, ‘I’m looking to clean out my mum’s garage and turn it into a studio, are you interested?’”
Yes, Sernack responded.
“She was like, ‘oh my God, I’ve been playing with our names together’. I’m like, ‘oh my God, I’ve been playing our names together’. And that’s where our name comes from. Brooke and Niki.”
These days, OMGs are more likely to be reserved for a solid NPAT. Nookie, since parting ways with its first private investor, has been forced to grow up.
Sydney-based brand and marketing agency Krites first financed the brand six years ago, when Sernack and Coleman sought representation for their new label Nookie. This was a saving grace for the pair, not only from a financial perspective but strategically, with the agency having extensive industry contacts across Australia and Asia.
It was not without consequences, however. Sernack, who has spent the last one and a half years bringing the majority of Nookie’s manufacturing back to Australia, was a novice when it came to using offshore partners, a requirement of the investment deal.
“We did a big China run and it was just a nightmare to manage,” she says. “We had 5000 dresses come back that reverted back to the first sample. They were completely the wrong fabric, wrong print. It was one story, but if you don’t deliver 5000, it hurts your whole business.”
When the investment deal came to an end several seasons ago, so too did Coleman’s direct involvement with the Nookie brand (she is still a shareholder), a decision that was as “organic” and “respectful” as their initial partnership, Sernack says.
Today Nookie and its swimwear sister label Nookie Beach service independent boutiques across Australia and internationally, in addition to distribution channels through department store David Jones. Sernack is in no hurry to push the brand’s export potential, but is strategically pursuing select markets.
“It’s strategic because it’s an expensive process – you need money,” she explains. “Especially with a name like Nookie, I need trademarks in all these different countries. And, for example in America, their trading mentality has to do with trade shows: Project, Bread & Butter. These things cost money.”
Showroom representation is also vital to capitalise on any business generated during these trade shows, with buyers preferring to deal brand representatives on ground.
Sernack did her homework before signing on an agent, meeting with 20 to 30 different representatives across Los Angeles and New York on a recent business trip. So adamant was she about her level of investment, she ended up brokering her own deal with Nookie’s current US agent.
“I actually wrote an agreement and they agreed to it – it showed my intention to build the brand with them. You have to take the time in the US. Don’t get pressured to sign. Labels gets burnt, even the [big designers]. It’s a different world.”
Closer to home, Sernack is also leveraging opportunities in the corporate sector. She designs and develops uniforms for multimillion- dollar entertainment complex ivy, has produced 17,000 promotional shirts for haircare brand GHD and undertaken similar projects with Australia’s Next Top Model and Red Bull. This is essential in maintaining cash-flow throughout the entire year, she says.
“This is also really helping my business too because the more work I can give to the cutters and makers, the better the relationship is,” Sernack says, adding that high-volume orders can be turned around in as little as a month onshore.
“I see the benefits in opening new lines, continually leveraging off what we’ve already built and continually building this bigger brand. Like with our uniforms. That might bring in a [cash injection] from a quick run.”
Sernack admits there are “some garments” which can’t be created onshore and components will be produced overseas, but her resolve is strong, earning her distribution in premium department store David Jones.
“I’ve had to stay strong with price points,” she says. “I’ve gone to Myer before with the Nookie Beach collection ... and they were like ‘we want this at that price point, that at that price point’. I’m pretty affordable, Nookie Beach particularly. I’m like, ‘ok guys, you’ve got to appreciate that I’m an Australian-made label and I’d really have to go overseas to achieve those price points’. And they’re like, ‘can you?’. There’s not much support there. Unfortunately, the customer is about the garment, the customer doesn’t care where the garment comes from. Well I do. I actually do care about the Australian industry.”
And with her newfound business prowess, Sernack stands to be part of that for a long time to come.