Tara Moses, the chief operating officer of R.M.Williams and one of the key backers of upscaling onshore clothing and footwear manufacturing, has stepped down from her post.
Moses confirmed with Ragtrader that she stepped down from the role a few weeks ago.
Hailing from the United States, Moses began her career in operational management and manufacturing as an engineer at air conditioning manufacturer Lennox International in the early 2000s. She then moved to door manufacturing at Pella Corporation, and held a senior management role at Target US.
More recently, she was a senior director of manufacturing at Red Wing Shoes, before relocating to Adelaide, South Australia to run operations at R.M.Williams.
Moses has been with the Australian bootmaker since August 2022, with her crowning achievement being the doubling of R.M.Williams’ local manufacturing capacity.
She said this was her key priority moving into the role, with her appointment coming just over year after Andrew and Nicola Forrest snapped up the bootmaker for $190 million from L Catterton, a key backer of various retail brands, including apparel brands such as Ganni, A.P.C. and Birkenstock.
Moses said the Forrest family, which manages R.M.Williams as well as hatmaker Akubra under Tattarang, were wanting to scale the bootmaker’s reach globally. And one of the key hurdles to make that happen was production capacity.
“All the boots have always been and are still made in Adelaide, so we needed to increase production in order to be able to go globally,” Moses says.
Moses and her team managed to secure space that was 100 metres from the long-standing facility in Salisbury. She says it was important to keep the space as close as possible, given many workers work alongside family members, and she didn’t want to see them separated.
“Essentially, one facility had apparel, footwear, footwear repairs, and leather craft. So I made one facility just footwear, and then had apparel, leather craft, and repairs moved into another facility, and then got additional space for the DC, and then filled it with a tonne of equipment.”
At least $8 million was invested in this upscaling, which also included the launch of a dedicated women’s boot line. This upscaling has led to continued growth across Europe and the United States, with Moses saying the executive team has been doing a few hunting trips for retail and wholesale opportunities across Europe.
Moses was also a key figurehead in the R.M.Williams partnership with the Australian Fashion Council (AFC) to help drive local textile, clothing and footwear (TCF) manufacturing output.
The plan was sparked when Moses and fellow c-suite Angela Winkle – currently chief customer officer, but then chief sustainability and strategy officer – met with the AFC two years ago.
“I was a part of building the strategy with the AFC,” Moses says. “This is quite helpful, because RM Williams has scale, but something in small quantities versus a production at scale have different challenges.
“I was able to bring that to the table with AFC, sharing the challenges that we are facing – skilled trade shortages, a lot of the additional costs that go with it, the supply chain, the equipment.”
While the strategy is still in its early days – launched officially in April this year – Moses tells Ragtrader that upscaling local TCF manufacturing is very much viable.
“What we've been seeing, too, is people are really interested in the movement,” Moses says. “Businesses have been overly surprised about the kinds of responses we’ve been getting [since launching the movement].
“We've been getting a lot more response than we thought. It's a coordinated effort, which has never, ever been done.
“It will be interesting to see how that pans out. That was a 10 year strategy, and only launched in April, so that's in its infancy. But I’m proud of what R.M.Williams was able to do, to boost that strategy and get it where it's at today.”
Moses says she is currently enjoying a well-earned break, but says the next step for her career will likely be in advising and consultancy.