Gill Lawrence has launched three labels during the last decade, all of which you can still find on retail racks all over Australia. Here, she tells Erin O'Loughlin the secrets of a being
a wholesaler with staying power.
She speaks of 'peers' instead of 'competitors', espouses the importance of compassion in business, and imparts all she has learnt about brand development via her own creative agency, The Wonderland.
Yet Gill Lawrence's notable lack of cynicism with regard to the fashion business is not due to any lack of experience. This 34-year-old mother of three has already clocked up over 10 years in Australia's fashion wholesale sector, working at the helm of not one, not two, but three labels. Her latest venture is Toi et Moi, a two-year-old womenswear brand that has 130 independent stockists across Australia as well as distribution in General Pants and David Jones.
It's a long way from Sydney University's medical school, but that is where Lawrence's career in the Australian apparel business unexpectedly began. After moving from Queensland to Sydney to study medicine, a bounty of other influences took over and began to nip at her heels. Stints in modelling and advertising followed, then a decision to transfer to an economics and marketing degree meant Lawrence began to cultivate small business nous.
In 2001, a cash injection from her grandfather coupled with the belief there was a gap in the market for youth underwear and loungewear saw Lawrence debut a youth surf label. It was 2001 and she christened the venture Mermaid Sister.
“I was really only 22 or 23 years old,” Lawrence says. “I loved the excitement of seeing something I had created in store. It was really as simple as that, at that point.”
It was only months later, however, that she realised her finances weren't going to allow her to continue Mermaid Sister's lounge room operations. Fortuitously, she was introduced to Wassim and Ziad Gazal at Hot Springs and Mermaid Sister became a brand underneath their umbrella.
It was one of the first outside brands Hot Springs brought into its fold, having operated up until that point in the discount department store market. The lessons were fast and furious for everyone. While Lawrence was enjoying the freedom afforded by structured logistics and proper warehousing, among other benefits, Hot Springs had to adapt to the needs of independent operators.
“There has to be – and we still have this philosophy in my new business now – a level of compassion,” she says. “Everybody has good times and bad times and really, for a relationship to be long-standing, you need to have an element of give and take.”
As Mermaid sister planted roots in the surfwear market, an increase in demand for streetwear saw Lawrence and Hot Springs launch new label Milk & Honey in 2003.
“It took off straight away. It still had the same design ethic as Mermaid Sister – I'm always very print-focused – and Milk & Honey just took it to a whole other level. I used a lot of graphic designers and everything was hand-drawn and very unique.
"It basically then gave us a hand in the surf market and a hand in the street fashion market and we could really see where the growth areas were.”
The years on Milk & Honey saw Lawrence working on collections for three Australian Fashion Weeks, chain operators such as General Pants and David Jones and international buyers. While Lawrence says she “grew out” of the ability to relate to the Mermaid Sister customer, she recalls her years at Milk & Honey as a big achievement.
“It really gave me a broad scope of the fashion business – the ability to see on many levels what works and what doesn't work,” she says.
Among the critical lessons was how to go about selling to majors – “presentation is everything” – and the need to concentrate on your brand as well as your collections.
“If you do want to start a fashion business because you are a good designer, before you put pen to paper go away and get some experience in marketing,” Lawrence says. “Even if that's to go and intern at a creative agency or a PR agency and look at how other people market their brands and their successes and failures... You can build the collection but the most important thing is to build the culture. If you build the culture, you can put almost anything underneath it.”
Fast forward to the end of 2008 and Lawrence's run with Hot Springs was over. She sold her stake in Mermaid Sister and Milk & Honey and swore she'd never run a fashion label again. Exhausted by the trade, Lawrence started her own agency The Wonderland.
“About two months after getting that started I had a phone call from Max Peggie from Maximum Agencies wanting to start something with me. After a month of convincing me it was a good idea, Toi et Moi was born.”
A womenswear label for 18 to 35-year-olds, Toi et Moi carries Lawrence's signature “dressed-down dressed-up” streetwear designs but with an injection of French cues.
“Every collection I do has that Francophile, red, white and blue, or black and white stripe section to it. All t-shirts have French expressions or takes on French photography or art.”
To get the business off the ground financially, Lawrence partnered with Peggie. The Wonderland is responsible for all costs associated with design and marketing, while Peggie takes care of production and logistics.
Of her marketing responsibilities, Lawrence says she prefers a grass roots approach.
“One of the biggest things I've learnt over the years is that involving the customer is the best way to market your brand, so we try and come up with creative concepts with the shoots that will get people talking. We get real girls involved.
“This season, we put together a competition called 'Style and Shoot' where, through Facebook and social media, we had creative couples pitch their concept for our spring 2011 shoot, which was 'An Australian girl in Paris'. A stylist and a photographer won the competition. They won $1000 and they styled and shot my whole campaign.
“That generated incredible numbers in term of people visiting our website, people liking us on Facebook. That really is the most important thing, building up our database so we can spread the word at any time without having to pay for ads in magazines.”
The spring 2011 collection is just one of eight ranges Lawrence creates for Toi et Moi per year: three summers, three winters, a coat injection for high winter and a party dress collection for spring racing season. Her rationale is that the more collections you release, the more you are communicating with your buyer.
“I don't necessarily work a lot closer to the season but I do have more opportunities for feedback and to fill the gaps if I've missed anything," she says.
Each collection contains 55 styles and product includes tees, singlets, jackets, shorts, skirts, trousers and maxi and mini dresses. Retail price points include $129 for a casual dress while party dresses retail for $149 to $159.
As for Toi et Moi's future, Lawrence says it's going to be concentrated on building the brand's wholesale presence overseas, as well as establishing two retail stores for the brand in Australia.
On the 10 years she's eked out thus far in the fashion wholesale game, Lawrence appears content with the destination it has brought her to. “I do pinch myself that it's worked as well as it has,” she says. “Now I just have to keep up the momentum.”