Womenswear brand Cooper Street has come a long way since its early days at Sydney’s Paddington Markets. Assia Benmedjdoub sits down with founder Craig Cooper to talk about how things were done before “procedures”.
"I made my stuff onshore, yeah," Craig Cooper says, referring to his first venture into garment manufacturing and the official launch of Cooper Street in 1988.
“I’d grab 15 metres of fabric from Smouha, choose three different colours and get the lot cut, made and delivered into tops within four days. Then I’d go to the markets on Saturday, work out which was the hottest selling colour and run back to Smouha at a million miles an hour to do it all over again.”
It must have felt like the final chapter closing on his past when the iconic fabric house collapsed under a mountain of debt earlier this year. Because these days, just about everything else has changed for the Sydney-based Ragtrader.
Cooper employs a team of around 20 to oversee design, production and accounting and, while he might drop by “Paddo” markets on the weekend, his womenswear brand certainly does not. It retails in 350 independent boutiques across Australia and has supplied department store Myer since 1994.
“That’s when everyone knew Cooper Street – when we got into those doors,” Cooper notes, adding the deal was helped along by an agent who had a contact at Myer HQ. “We didn’t do any advertising in those days, none, so getting into Myer was the biggest brand recognition we could get.”
Much of Cooper’s career is a result of his knack for making good contacts. When he began wholesaling the Cooper Street brand across Australia, he had a ready-made base of buyers thanks to his work for swimwear company Brian Rochford.
Cooper joined the business as a showroom sales assistant in 1979 before being promoted as an inhouse sales representative, a role he occupied for another four years.
“Then in 1984, I was poached by a fashion agency that represented Table Eight and picked up even more clients,” he adds. “It was really good to work around familiar people because you really learn the sales and marketing side of things. All those shopping centres – I can tell you who’s done well in what suburb for the past 20 years.”
A permanent success story has been womenswear chain Cue, where Cooper worked for 10 months before joining Rochford.
“Ohhh, wheeling those Cue racks down to [Sydney’s] Wynyard from George Street,” he remembers fondly. “I was in dispatch and he [Cue owner Rod Levis] easily had seven or eight stores in the city back then so it was a really fast-paced job. I was also in charge of the credit department – sorting out all the faulties – and learned a lot from that. What was acceptable, what was not, what was a write-off.”
Other than a private school education at Scott’s College and Cranbrook as well as a 12-month accounting course in Sydney, Cooper admits most of his knowledge has come from “always being on the job”. When he worked at Rochford, he learned how to look after clients by pointing out top selling items; when he “did a bit of agency work out of the back of my car” in the mid 1980s, he learned sales was as much about pitch as product; and the markets – well, that was Cooper’s university.
“I got my first stall in about 1984, when I started selling consignment stock off friends I knew in Surry Hills. It’s like you suddenly learn the scent of what’s hot. I’d look at a colour and go, ‘nup, that’s the wrong purple, yep, that’s the right purple’ and the same thing started happening for shapes and what was flattering, what worked with who, what didn’t.” With trends and retail know-how under his belt, he then moved on to launch his own brand.
“I found a cutter to use through friends in the industry. Who knows a cutter? Who knows a patternmaker? That’s how you did things back then, you got streetwise. I’d cut 150 units in the beginning, sometimes 60. I was very quick in those days because now everything becomes harder the bigger you get. Back then, I’d throw fabric at a cutter and ask him to make something in a day. Today there’s so much going on and it’s like ‘yep, here’s the production line, get in a queue’.”
That’s not to say his taste for fast fashion has subsided. Cooper Street produces new collections every month (comprising of up to 60 pieces per range) and can turn around in-season repeats in as little as two weeks.
Head designer Alicia Arcuri, who gave the brand a more on-trend feel when she was appointed to the position last September, says Cooper allows his team real liberty when it comes to brand aesthetic.
“At the beginning of the week, we’ll all sit around together and put our two bob in,” she says. “We’ll go out and purchase fabrics together, pull out samples, images, trends from magazines, sketches, trend predictions, but I don’t think Craig has ever said no to anything. He trusts us.”
In fact, when Arcuri approached Cooper with the idea of opening her own Cooper Street store earlier this year, he said yes al-most immediately.
“Basically, it would be a franchise style set up so she would own and operate it,” Cooper explains, adding it would likely open in the next year.
“Everyone’s been bugging me for the past 10 years to open up some retail stores but I feel like I had my fill of that at the markets. Alicia wants to do it and work out there on Thursday nights, Saturdays. She’ll be able to do what I did back in Paddo – see what works, what sells, what she should be making.”
If the store proves to be popular, Cooper says he’s happy to franchise one or two sites for major cities like Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane. His dream is to see the brand retail internationally through stores such as Selfridges or even a flagship on London’s famous Oxford Street under licence.
“We do a bit of wholesale in New Zealand, a sprinkling of stores in Asia and we talked about maybe going into Los Angeles. I think for the most part, we just want to keep maintaining those good monthly ranges.”
Cooper says he has no regrets about his life in the industry – or the way he’s chosen to operate the Cooper Street business model – but one gets the feeling he’s had his fair share of burns. For one, he keeps a tight lip over a “company restructure” at the close of calendar 2008.
“It was in dispatch and sales,” he says slowly. “Let’s just put it this way – things work much better these days. I probably could have gotten rid of some employees earlier.”
He refuses to elaborate, hinting it had to do with “integrity” and adding it has made the team at Cooper Street a lot tighter.
“Now I have found my loyal quality staff and everything works well. I like to focus on the good stuff – I was and still am extremely proud to see my labels represented in department stores, starting off from my own little set-up in Paddington Markets. I basically taught myself from the ground up – there’s no theory with me, it’s all practice.”