Long live the Ronen Empire!

The Dolina brothers, Nitzan and Izhar Ronen, are due for release from prison at the end of August this year.

Having paid their debt to society, and their other debt to the Taxation Department, they will return to a life of plenty – because rich they certainly still are.

For their corporate misdeeds the Ronens were given sentences of eight and a half years each, with a non-parole period of five and a half years.

Their discharge from prison will therefore be under parole conditions, meaning that they will be restricted in their business activities such as being company directors.

It is therefore unlikely that the Dolina Group will see much of Nitzan day to day and certainly nothing of Izhar, who is said to have his sights set on a country life.

Although Nitzan was the driving force behind Dolina, the company does not appear to have suffered during his absence.

Its managing director for the last three years has been 35-year- old Scott Moore, who has steered it along with considerable success. He is the very model of a modern managing director: articulate, conservative and politically correct.

His background is in financial services, having done a stint with Price Waterhouse. He brought those skills, rather than an instinct for schmuttas, with him into the job. And it seems that he was just the sort of chief the company needed. There was no shortage of fashion Indians at the time he was appointed.

He emphasises the fact that, as a company, Dolina was not entangled with the illegal activities of the Ronens. He gives the impression of Dolina as an innocent cousin.

Predictably, Scott won’t divulge the company’s turnover. A bald figure might be misleading in any case, because there are a number of separate companies beneath the Dolina umbrella and they market 17 brands.

The only retailer in the group is Maggie T, with 30 stand-alone stores. There are plans to add an online store soon. The rest of the activities are all to do with supplying more than 1000 boutiques and department stores nationally with various levels of mid-priced fashion garments on a wholesale basis. 

The biggest companies in the group are House of Stitches, Resort Report and the Clothing Company. They are all Melbourne based and under the general management of highly regarded operator, Joy Silitto.

Like most of its competitors, Dolina has been harshly dealt with by the current winter season. Scott acknowledges this as a ‘challenge’ and says it probably points to more trans-seasonal garments and ‘the flexibility to develop multiple sales cycles.’ Translated, that means not too thick or heavy, and a stream of new ranges in-season.

All of Dolina’s production is done off-shore, mostly in China. Local factories might be used for repairs or sampling but even this is rare.

The company does all its own warehousing and there are plans to develop the Ronen-owned property across the road in Zetland. This probably explains the aged government-department feeling of the current building, although its roof’s value as a display canvas for the Dolina name is unparalleled. Everybody who takes the South Dowling Street route to Sydney airport sees it and is reminded of the company.

Dolina as a garment brand was retired last year because other, better accepted brands were clashing with it. However, the company is still keen to expand its stable.

One of those expansions has been the recently acquired license for Bleu Blanc Rouge, a successful French brand wholesaling to 27 countries plus its own boutiques in France.

Bleu Blanc Rouge is aimed at women in their thirties and beyond with day wear and dressier occasion-wear. Designed by two sisters based in Nice on the French Riviera, and price modified by Chinese make, I see this label as a winner in Australia. It would almost make me open a boutique. Hang on, am I mashugga? Forget I said that.

Graphic tale

The subject of t-shirts brings me to the awkward business of one designer being ‘inspired’ by another, known by the less couth as’ knocking off’. It is accepted that a few Australian designers actually design, while the others actually copy.

Whether they do this by divine osmosis or by buying promising samples from overseas retailers remains a mystery. They come unstuck, of course, when they try to sell ideas back to the market from which it was copied.

I was recently reminded of an iconic t-shirt brand known for loudly defending the originality of its graphics.
When the sales manager went out to show his latest range, one of his customers was aghast.

“I just got back from Japan last week,” the customer said, “and you’d never guess: one shop in the Ginza had already knocked off your graphics and was showing them in its window!”