With the Australian Fashion Industry Awards fast approaching, Ragtrader is taking a daily look inside each category — the finalists, the work behind the entries and the strategy that earned them their place.
Next up: Best Place to Work, highlighting the workplaces that set a high standard on internal culture and capability. The five finalists are Akubra, Cotton On, Honey Birdette, Petal & Pup and Philosophy Australia.
Winners will be revealed at the AFIA Awards Lunch on Thursday 6 August at The Promenade Docklands, Melbourne. Tickets are on sale now.
The AFIAs 2026 are supported by Headline Sponsor The Retail Score, Gold Sponsors Better Packaging and ReStore, Silver Sponsors Apparel21 and Williams Logistics and Bronze Sponsor Afterpay.
Here's the work that got the finalists there in alphabetical order:
Akubra
At Akubra, tenure ranges from two years to more than 40, and families have worked within the business across multiple departments for generations. That depth of loyalty and shared knowledge preserves the craftsmanship behind one of Australia's most iconic heritage brands — and opens rich mentorship pathways for newer team members.
As one of the last large-scale handcrafted hat manufacturers remaining in the world, Akubra treats professional development as custodianship. Highly specialised workshop skills are passed on through hands-on mentorship and generational knowledge transfer, while retail, customer service, e-commerce and marketing teams receive ongoing training across new platforms introduced through the brand's digital transformation.
A major cultural focus has been breaking down silos. Teams that historically operated independently now work together through shared planning sessions, product launches, campaign reviews and customer feedback loops — strengthening communication and ownership through a period of significant change including a major website relaunch and retail expansion. Flexible working across digital and support functions, transparent leadership communication and collective celebration of wins have sustained engagement across a workforce spanning multiple generations.
Cotton On
Cotton On's 20,000 team members across 20 countries sit at the heart of a culture grounded in the purpose of making a positive difference in people's lives — and the benefits carry genuine scale behind them.
The Geelong Global Support Centre's Body Health & Wellness Club recorded more than 68,000 visits last year, while onsite café The Beckley served 86,559 chef-prepared meals and 105,997 barista coffees in reusable cups. The Returnity program supported more than 350 parents transitioning back to work with part-time hours at full pay, and onsite discounted childcare supported more than 133 children each day. The global wellbeing program Healthiest YOU is embedded into retail training, backed by an expanded EAP including social workers, financial counsellors and nutritionists.
Development runs equally deep. Around 75,000 learning courses were completed through the YOUhub platform last year. The Our Awards recognition program drew 400 nominations, with 60 winners visiting Foundation projects in Uganda, Thailand and the Great Barrier Reef. And 11,191 anniversaries were celebrated, including 1,272 team members reaching ten-plus years. Sixty per cent of leaders are female, with a zero per cent gender pay gap for like-for-like roles.
Honey Birdette
Honey Birdette achieved a 77% employee engagement score in 2025 — the product of a culture grounded in celebration, connection and genuine care. Every team member receives 18 weeks of paid parental leave and a premium gym membership, alongside paid Birthday Leave and a Honey Love Day to spend on whatever matters most.
The business knows how to celebrate. After hitting company targets in March 2025, the entire team was treated to a yacht party on Sydney Harbour. Monthly Lunch & Learns, Department Takeovers of the Honey Drinks event and traditions like Murder in the Boudoir keep connection alive. The monthly Venus Award recognises excellence across retail and head office.
Development is tailored to the nature of the business. All training runs through The Hive learning management system and retail teams master the Honey Steps selling methodology, while the team completed sex-positive education with Somatic Sexologist Alice Childs — equipping them to engage all customers with warmth and zero judgement. Dysfunctional Person Training ensures Honeys feel safe managing threatening behaviour in store, while annual anti-bullying and harassment training keeps necessarily explicit product conversations professional, respectful and psychologically safe.
Petal & Pup
Petal & Pup maintained an employee satisfaction and engagement rate above 90% through its annual global Pulse Survey over the past 12 months — feedback that directly informs workplace initiatives. The numbers behind it are just as strong: a 93.44% employee retention rate, with 22.5% of the permanent global workforce having been with the business five years or more.
Career pathways are real, not rhetorical. The newly introduced Talent Matrix framework gives employees clarity around expectations and progression, supported by annual reviews and goal development workshops — an approach reflected in 16% of the permanent workforce receiving promotions in the most recent review cycle. Internal mobility runs deep: 12% of current head office positions are held by employees who began their careers in the warehouse.
As a global business, shared experience is treated as an investment, with more than 20 US team members travelling to Australia, nine Australian employees visiting the US and colleagues from both regions attending a European marketing trip this year. A flexible hybrid model built on trust carries no company-wide attendance mandates. Community initiatives connect the team to shared purpose — 283 items donated to Dress for Success and the 500 Club sample program funding employee-nominated charities.
Philosophy Australia
At Philosophy Australia, culture is not a program — it's how the business operates. The proof: 100% staff and contractor retention over the past seven years, a level of stability almost unheard of in fashion.
The couture-style production model is central. Each garment is made by one machinist from start to finish, building deep craftsmanship pride and creating highly skilled specialists rather than task-based operators, with many contractors working alongside the brand for more than a decade. Monthly team family gatherings keep the multi-location workforce aligned, while a founder-led mentorship approach shares decision-making and commercial insight in real time. The annual Word of the Year provides a shared cultural anchor — in 2026, Emerge.
Around 90% of the team, contractors and suppliers are women. All garments are designed and manufactured in Sydney with fewer than 15 people contributing to each piece, and flexibility is embedded to support the realities of balancing work and life. Inclusion extends to the customer, with designs for women aged 40-plus in sizes 8 to 24. It extends to community too, with over $20,000 in product donated in 2025 to organisations including Thread Together and the Australian Red Cross — while 80 to 90% of wholesale business comes from long-standing relationships.