Duchamp lobbied for the creation of one all-encompassing fashion trade fair for Australia. Erin O’Loughlin Meets one company that pushed for fashion exposed.
Long-time Australian wholesaler Duchamp nominates its latest marketing initiative as the launch of its own website. This, in an age when some are declaring applications such as Facebook and Twitter passé. Yet the anecdote speaks volumes about how this business does business.
Duchamp national sales director Alison Grant, for one, has just finished a campaign to source new stockists in New South Wales. The strategy wasn't complex: Grant went to Canberra, hired a car and hit the road.
“Face-to-face is the only way to do it,” she says. “The customers love you doing that. They just think it's great that you've taken the time and effort to visit them in their home.”
The technique is just one of many facets of the business that closely resembles life as it was at the start of Duchamp’s operations in 1981.
“I don’t think our selling strategies have changed at all,” Grant says. “All along we have always looked after our customer. They’re the people who are presenting our product in the marketplace. They have always, and always will be, an incredible part of our team as we see it.”
Judging by stockist numbers, Duchamp’s commitment to traditional strategy works. The business has 520 stockists across three brands, namely Duchamp menswear, womenswear and sleepwear label Yuu. Among those 520 retailers is David Jones.
The department store has ranged Duchamp menswear since the label first hit the market, and today carries the range of men’s basics and fashion pieces in all its stores nationally.
The sell-through of stock service styles is a key driver of the ongoing relationship.
“We do a thing called a traveller’s short and the traveller’s pant, which just rocket out the door week in and week out, whether it’s the middle of winter or middle of summer,” Grant says. “The menswear has got a much stronger stock refill basis to it.”
Other key menswear styles include basic tees, polar fleece rugby tops and knit polos. Grant says such basics account for 20 per cent of menswear sales, the rest made up by seasonal, more fashion-focused pieces. In the women's range, garments for the top of the body have always performed strongly.
“We always do striped t-shirts in cotton and cotton elastane. This coming winter, we're doing some beautiful viscose elastane tops which have got lovely drape and beautiful prints and colours," she says.
The David Jones account assists in ensuring Duchamp menswear continues to outperform the womenswear range, which debuted in the market in 2002.
However, the company’s high proportion of regional stockists points to a business not prepared to rest on its department store laurels. Duchamp co-director John Gleeson says the ratio of regional to city stockists across the company’s three brands stands at 60:40.
“I don’t think there’s any great difference between the way the independents look at the brand to the way David Jones looks at the brand,” Grant says. “They’re both looking for modern, up-to-date, casual [apparel].”
The Richmond-based company has 10 staff in its head office, supplemented by agents around Australia. Once established, Grant says it’s rare for Duchamp to sever business relationships.
“I think the only change in the last 12 months has been somebody who retired,” she says. “We don’t change.”
The company manufactures in China across six “very loyal” factories.
“We have expanded the number of factories as the requirements of the garments have demanded, but we haven’t chopped and changed,” Grant says.
In amongst the wealth of such steadfast components, there are occasional new business developments. Recent years have seen Duchamp launch a small retail arm, currently operating three stores across Victoria. The latest opened in Balwyn, Melbourne, in 2009.
In 2007, the company also acquired Yuu, then a two-year-old business. Today, the brand is the third biggest sleepwear supplier to David Jones and has 50 stockists nationally. Its manufacturing quantities have doubled since coming under the Duchamp umbrella.
“We could see two years ago that the business was in very much a growth stage,” Grant says. “The Yuu retailer, the Yuu customer, is a totally different being to a Duchamp womenswear or menswear customer. What the advantage is to Duchamp of taking on the Yuu label is the fact that it’s generating more sales for the company and more profit for the company.”
Now only months away from its 30th birthday, Grant can’t reveal what the company has planned for its birthday celebrations nor for its business strategy in the future. Gleeson, however, is a little more forthcoming about past successes.
“There’s no doubt our growth comes from our consistency: consistency of product, our service, reliability,” he says.