Good things take time

New Zealand may officially be in a recession but Caroline Mar is one fashion designer and retailer who isn't worried, writes Nicole Curin-Birch.

As the owner of five plus size The Carpenters Daughter boutiques with a wholesale business under the same label, Mar says having a niche business means there is no such thing as a quiet patch. "When you are dealing with plus sizes and you have a good product then the demand will always be there for it," says Mar. "I'm getting busier and busier because there doesn't seem to be very much else out there for fashionable curvy women."

In fact, Mar says it's because plus size women have such low self esteem that she has decided to participate on the runway for the first time at Air New Zealand Fashion Week (ANZFW) later this month. While not on the official ANZFW schedule, The Carpenters Daughter will be staging a runway show at the public Fashion Weekend on September 20 and 21. 

"I had a wee stall at the exhibition last year and that experience got me thinking about how under represented larger women are in the fashion world.  This year I wanted to show everyone just how gorgeous plus sized women can be and that they do have options available to them when it comes to clothing.  It's not just about wearing baggy track pants and oversized T-shirts anymore."

The move, she says, is entirely for the public. Mar says she's in no hurry to rapidly grow her business and after looking at her career history, it's easy to believe her. Quite content with just one retail store and a handful of wholesale accounts, it took 19 years for Mar to expand The Carpenters Daughter brand any further. That all changed when she was selected to take part in a High Impact programme run by accounting firm WHK Gosling Chapman last year.

"I've always just been happy to grow things really slowly and place my focus on our customers and our product quality and I hadn't really thought about taking it much further until I got the call from Gosling Chapman. When they told me what a great business model I had and how I could expand it by doing this and that I realised I should really go for it, but in a very measured way."

Go for it she has. Last year she opened four additional stores in Auckland, Christchurch, Hamilton and Wellington and increased her wholesale accounts so that they now make up 15 percent of her business. She now employs 23 staff members ranging in job title from patternmaker to store manager.

And, she say, there is still plenty of room move. "I am looking at Australia quite seriously and am hoping to have a presence there this time next year. After all, it makes good sense for me because Australia was just named as being the most obese country in the world with the average size being a 15. I think there'll be a whole lot of women there who would be interested in what The Carpenters Daughter has to offer."

Like many designers before her, Mar began making her own clothes out of necessity. With a keen eye for fashion there weren't many clothing options available for her then size 22 body when she started out almost 20 years ago. It was while she was working as a store detective she realised there was a demand for the style of clothing she was making for herself at home.

"I have never believed that just because you are big you should cover yourself up. I was always into layering and using interesting cuts and textiles and when I was at work I would have women coming up to me and telling me how wonderful I looked and asking where I got my clothes from. I realised there was no reason why curvy women couldn't look just as good as everyone else so I got some ideas and designs together and opened my shop."

From the outset Mar has strictly adhered to a made in New Zealand philosophy and would never consider manufacturing off shore, even though for others this has made more financial sense. "I'm a proud New Zealander and very much in love with this nation so I see it as a duty to keep our people working. The quality of workmanship here is second to none and at the end of the day my customers like to know they are buying kiwi made. One thing you'll never see is a made in China label on any of the clothes coming out of my stores."

As well as her own label, Mar also stocks Nikki McClintock, Hilary Rowley and Cherry Bishop in her stores.
"I like the idea of being able to give something back so I like to discover people and help them grow their own businesses. Often they won't be designing plus size clothes at all but I'll see something of theirs that I like, call them up and see if they can do a run of them in larger sizes for my customers."

Keeping her customers continually happy has been the secret to Mar's success.  While she doesn't offer loyalty programmes she finds her customers keep coming back because she keeps her price points competitive and always has new merchandise on offer.

"I don't really believe in seasonal drops. I have new stock in brought into the stores every couple of weeks and that keeps people interested. My clientele are not women who get overlooked by society. They are the women making big decisions, they are the teachers, lawyers, politicians and business women who are out there doing the important stuff and The Carpenters Daughter helps to give them a wardrobe to empower and make them feel confident."

Mar says she'll wait and see what sort of reaction she gets at ANZFW before she makes any serious decisions about where the business will be headed in the future, but in the meantime she is happy to bide her time. "It took me almost two decades to go from one to five stores so I'm in no hurry but we are no where near capacity yet. I think I could take it as big as I want."

By Nicole Curin-Birch