Ragtrader magazine founder Fraser McEwing, who founded the trade publication over 40 years ago, offers his two cents on the changeover at Sass & Bide.
The departure from sass & bide of founding designers, Sarah Jane-Clarke and Heidi Middleton, marks the end of the most finely crafted pieces of spin ever seen in the Australian fashion industry.
How Myer parted with $72.25 million for a company that was on its knees and then followed it up with ludicrous statements, which failed to justify the purchase, ought to become a business degree case study.
I don’t begrudge the girls their payday, which, by all accounts, was modest, but I do question the way financial commentators ignored the whole smelly deal.
Nobody but me, it seems, wanted to know who received the $72.25 million, how the price was arrived at and how the company has really performed since the takeover.
Myer ignored my requests for this information.
Late last year CEO Bernie Brookes was quoted as saying: “We enjoy a very positive relationship with sass & bide founders, Heidi Middleton and Sarah-Jane Clarke, as well as David Briskin and are pleased that they will remain involved in the business.”
Yet six months later, we hear a representative for the brand (not Bernie this time) telling us, “Both Heidi and Sarah-Jane have been slowly transitioning out of the business, and it has now reached a point where both girls feel confident that the business will go on to grow and thrive without their day-to-day involvement.”
How much slow transitioning can happen in six months?
I’m more inclined to think that a much longer time line was created by key player, Daniel Besen, way before the purchase of the first 65 per cent was discussed with Bernie Brookes.
Anyway, everybody has gone home now and I’m just a voice carping in the darkness of a done deal.
If there’s anything I’ve learned it is that big public companies are about as transparent as lump of coal.