Fraserlive: Divorce advice

There are always juicy stories about manufacturers and their agents. Here's another one. A well-known Sydney almost-designer label has been with a Sydney agent for 10 years (not biblically). The relationship had worked well until. . .

The agent is busy making appointments with buyers to view the upcoming summer range (probably trying to call itself a 'collection'). With two weeks to go before the opening, and key appointments made, the agent is told that he is to be replaced ay another agent. This is a total shock. He'd made some suggestions to his principal on improvements, but they certainly didn't include a divorce followed by an instant re-marriage. It was the old story of the principal blaming the agent for flaccid sales when it was the fault of the styling.

The new agent does the right thing by calling the old agent to kind of apologise and commiserate, but business is business.

The principal appears not to give a damn and treats the agent of 10 years as you would a tele-marketer ringing at dinner time to sell carpet cleaning.

Although we have disappointing behaviour here, it again gets back to contracts. The old agent frantically searches his filing cabinet looking for a 10 year old contract but can't find it. He can't even remember whether there was one.

The ethical behaviour is for either party to give three months notice of intention to part. But ethics are worth little when it comes to the crunch. What it needs is a simple but enforceable pre-nup every time an agent marries a manufacturer. If either or both sides want a divorce then they must agree on compensation - also written into the contract.

A kind of appropriate ending to this particular divorce is that the new marriage has turned out to be barren because it has not solved the principal's flagging sales levels, in fact they have plummeted.

Back when there was a strong agent's association, bad behaviour from either side was punished by the tribe voting them off the island. The power base is now too much in the manufacturers' favour for this to happen. In any case, there's no longer agents' association, and one has to ask why. Obviously there are less agents, but the hundreds of small manufacturers need representatives, especially interstate. A decent commission (between 12 and 15 per cent) still works out better than manufacturers trundling around the country showing in expensive hotel rooms.

My personal underpants odyssey
I've dreamed up a great advertising campaign, which I give to the Australian fashion industry free of charge. It is titled: 'Edit your wardrobe!'

The idea came upon me when I edited my underpants, and I thought the least I could do was to share this with you, who have put up with me for all these years.

Some background. During my stint as an unsuccessful importer of Indian furniture about five years ago, I was on a buying trip, staying in a barely-three star hotel in Jodhpur. The hotel had what its brochure called a ballroom but because the city was virtually ball-less, Mr Boob, the owner, had let out the space to some clothing manufacturers to clear their stock. One of the stall holders was offering a mountain of men's cotton briefs. I bought a couple of pairs and tried them on in my room upstairs. Suddenly realising what an extraordinary bargain they were, I hurtled back to the ball room and went berserk. I became fixated, returning to buy more and more. The stall holder loved me so much that he invited me his daughter's wedding - along with about five thousand other people, elephants, camels, and assorted horses. I had to refuse because I was due to leave well before the wedding, but I carried away in my suitcase seventy pairs of his underpants.

Luckily my bag wasn't opened by customs in Sydney, because I would have been accused of trafficking in underpants. Personal use sir? Wot, seventy pairs?

Recently I reviewed the now well worn stock. Some pairs I should never have bought because they are were always too small, while others, my favourites, had been overworked and the elastic had disintegrated. Certain men will sympathise with the dilemma of their underpants falling down inside their trousers. It forces upon the wearer a walk that imitates stepping around invisible boulders and finally produces mysterious bulges around the knees.

The upshot of my editing was that I gave about 40 pairs to St Vinnies which may bring some mirth to homeless men as they hop about tying to keep their underpants up.

Now, if we could encourage consumers to do the same with all their clothing, it would make room for new stuff, and new prosperity for our industry.

Let's hear it again: "Edit your wardrobe!"