Who you goin’ to call?

You’re a cutting-edge, upmarket designer. You have a collection that is brilliant and will be hailed as such if only you can get exposure. You want media coverage that will send early adopters flocking into boutiques asking for your label. This will create desirable pull-through selling rather than push-through selling. Now, where to you go for help?

One place could be the Trish Nicol Agency, which describes itself as “a designer public relations and event management company specialising in the premium lifestyle market”.

Nice wording, but how much does it cost and does the media promotion, including internet chatter, translate into sales?

On the subject of cost, Nicol smiles and shakes her plentiful blond top. I’ve entered forbidden territory. She softens: it depends on the expectations of both parties, like setting the agenda for a marriage. In the end, if the client does not have the potential to succeed, in the agency’s view, or the client gets a terrible fright at the cost, there’s a nice cup of coffee but no wedding.

Nicol, with girl-next-door friendliness, started her business seven years ago from home after completing a design course at RMIT in Melbourne. Even now she sometimes stops to marvel at the journey which has brought her the PR care of 15 ground-breaking fashion labels and a remarkable collection of others including Cartier, Bentley Sydney, Boss, Montblanc, Aston Martin, Drambuie, Ducati, Mini, Guylian, Schweppes.

One of the side benefits of this stable of fashion and lifestyle products is that they can often be brought together for a promotion, each enhancing the other.

The agency employs just seven people. While they know how to light up the sky with their clients’ products they also know how to run a business. Nicol’s account director, Lisa Collins, comes with film-star looks and radio-ready voice, belying a practical mind that quietly deals in nuts and bolts.

Some clients are represented on a retainer basis while others pay by the hour. They all receive regular reports on where their money is being spent and the results achieved – based on the formula that PR space is worth three times that of advertising.

While the publicity strategy is different for each label the agency continually works the other side of the equation by keeping in touch with fashion editors, television producers and radio hosts. It is currently applying itself to the best use of the mercurial internet.

The agency works in a leafy, refined part of Rushcutters Bay. Its premises are compact and purposeful rather than showy. Nicol has been tempted to add a sales side to her business, encouraged no doubt by the plaudits generated by her PR, but has so far resisted.

The labels whose fame rests in her hands would certainly make a magical sales mix, but financial rewards might be elusive. Some of the fashion labels are Alannah Hill, Flamingo Sands, Hugo Boss, Jack London, Luci in the Sky, Nobody Denim, Ruby Smallbone, Toni Maticevski Myer Line, Shoe the Bear, Blue Illusion and Dizingof.

They sit in a list which also includes accessory and beauty products. The marketing architecture is constructed so that none of the labels clash.

The agency also knows how to mount an event that will attract the right media. It believes in Fashion Week as a good focal point for many of its clients and also an affirmation of their will to succeed. It works with the day’s hot photographers, copywriters, advertising agencies and graphic artists.

It can’t afford to accept mediocre work in any of these disciplines. But for all the urgency that its public relations seeks to create, the agency continually reminds its clients – and itself for that matter – that brand building takes time and planning, that there are no silver bullets.

What a COO

Cheryl Williams has been slotted into a key role in the Specialty Fashion Group, filling the newly created position of chief operating officer (COO). As such, she is almost at the top of the totem pole, with only managing director Gary Perlstein above her. Everybody reports to Cheryl and Cheryl reports to Gary. Neat.

Williams came most recently from Macro Wholefoods, where she was CEO. Before that, she was CEO of Bras ‘n Things.

Beyond these basic facts, the folk as Specialty are not prepared to go. One assumes that Williams has been put in to take some of the load from Perlstein, who must be mightily weighed down having to look after some 840 stores which include the well-known brands of Millers, Katies and Queenspark.

Word on the street is that one of Williams’ tasks will be to lead an upgrade in internal sourcing which, in turn, will mean the blow torch turned up on direct importing, with a search for more and better overseas suppliers.