Australian womenswear brand Zimmermann is one of the few designer operators with staying power.
Here are five things Nicky and Simone Zimmermann have taught us about taking their business global.
Seize the day
"Following the first Australian Fashion Week, we were lucky enough to receive quite a bit of media coverage in North America," Nicky says.
"It's a funny story but from that show we received a phone call from a well known sales agent in New York who told us she was 'working out' on her treadmill looking at our swimwear on CNN and wanted to represent us in America.
"From there, we started to sell to some high profile stockists like Barneys and from there, the wholesale business slowly built."
Focus, focus, focus
"We grew organically and made the decision to focus on the US over trying to spend a whole lot of different international markets at once," Nicky says.
"We knew that we needed to have a consistent presence over there because you can't really turn up one season and then disappear for a while and then come back again and expect that you will have support from your stockists and from customers."
Be prepared to invest
"You have to invest in everything from sales to marketing and then if you're making the decision to open stores, you have the cost of that plus all that is needed to support the retail business," Simone says.
"There is also a personal investment you need to make - Nicky and I have young families and we've had to find ways to travel quite a bit and still be there for everything else."
Batten down the hatches
"We were fortunate that our business was fairly stable through [the global financial crisis]," Simone says.
"We had our own showroom and sales team in place, so there was that longer standing presence in the market and I think that consistency over time allowed us to continue with what we were doing.
"It's not like the stores completely stopped buying brands that they worked with, it was probably a matter that some buyers stopped taking some risks on newer designers that they had in the past."
Follow your instincts
"We opened a summer store on Greene Street in Soho (New York) in 2010 , and then from there it took us a while to find our permanent stores in New York and LA," Nicky says.
"The rough plan was to open in New York first but it just happened that we found a store on Robertson in LA first and we went with it."
