Breakfast of Big Ideas
Winning Against The Odds
Ragtrader's annual Breakfast of Big Ideas drew a sold-out crowd to Saltbox Sydney for a morning of candid, hard-won fashion business insight under the banner "Winning Against the Odds".
Across a keynote and three panels, eleven of the industry's sharpest operators laid out how they're growing in a market being reshaped by structural change — from BDO's macro read on the great retail sorting, to the brands outpacing it, the challengers rewriting the playbook and the leaders steering turnarounds in full public view. Here are the highlights.
“There's no loyalty in commodity product. The minute you're selling the same thing as everyone else, the only question left is who's cheapest."
Alice Barbery — CEO, Universal Store Group
Inside Universal Store's playbook: how disciplined markdowns and private label drove double-digit growth
Universal Store has built successive double-digit growth in youthwear — one of retail's most brutal categories — on what CEO Alice Barbery calls an "ecosystem" of disciplined markdowns, private label differentiation and old-school selling.
The discipline starts at the register. Universal runs four sales a year, timed to school holidays, and treats Black Friday as a single day rather than a month-long event. The strategy trains customers to buy at full price now or miss out — but it only holds because the product can't be found cheaper across the hall.
"There's no loyalty in commodity product," Barbery said, pointing to a private label strategy built on exclusive washes and special makeups with wholesale partners so the range can't be price-matched.
Own brands grew from 11% to 18% of Universal Store sales in FY25, with Perfect Stranger sales up 83%. But Barbery stressed private label began as a customer-service tool, not a margin grab, after the brand found it couldn't build complete outfits from third-party stock alone. Buyers carry margin targets but aren't forced to hit private-label quotas — the call stays customer-led.
The operating model is granular: ranges are geo-targeted across 112 individually graded stores, and buyers commit just 50% of open-to-buy upfront before chasing the rest with proven winners.
“We only spend 50% of our open to buy up front, and then we chase the rest with winners,” Barbery said. “If you think about being a stock trader, that’s how our buyers work.”
Barbery was candid about acquired brand Thrills, now pivoting from wholesale to retail after three-quarters of its largest customers went broke. Comp gains of 16-17% suggest the reset is landing.
Her closing note was cost. Barbery runs no EA, stays in cheap hotels and never flies business — discipline she frames as non-negotiable. "Be customer obsessed, not brand obsessed," she said.
Nine straight quarters: how a cold email and a culture-first reset rebooted Gap in Australia
Gap has posted nine consecutive quarters of growth on a "culture-led first, product-led second" strategy — and its Australian return began with a single email from Gap Australia CEO Melissa Trovato.
Trovato credited the global Gap playbook and brand chief Richard Dickson, whose Barbie revival pedigree informed a push to make Gap culturally relevant again. The clearest example: creative director Zac Posen sculpting Kendall Jenner's Met Gala gown from a classic Gap white tee. The next day, shoppers weren't buying any white T-shirt — they wanted a Gap one, because it bought them a piece of the moment.
“The main question around modern retail today is not how can I make it cheaper, how can I make it in five colours,” Trovato said. “It’s why do you matter — why do you matter to your customer?”
Underneath the cultural plays sits what she called surgical operational discipline — clearing aged inventory and preserving margin at all costs — plus a return to Americana essentials in logo hoodies, denim and white tees to rebuild trust, layered with collabs such as a Victoria Beckham drop that sold out in a day.
The franchise itself was won cold. Gap wasn't looking for a partner, so Trovato emailed and asked who to talk to. A reply landed within 24 hours, Gap flew out on a 48-hour turnaround, and after six to nine months of due diligence the deal was done. The rollout is still in early phases.
Myer is phase one — a disciplined launch that delivers an immediate national footprint and a multi-generational customer base skewing toward Gen Z. Trovato wants to make Gap a denim authority in the Myer ecosystem and roll out baby and kids.
The headwind is Australia's promotional intensity. Trovato argued revenue is vanity and margin is what keeps a business alive, betting cultural relevance can insulate Gap from a race to the bottom.
Expressive luxury and a viral bag charm: how Coach is winning Gen Z in ANZ
Tapestry's APAC arm has delivered eight consecutive quarters of growth, with sales up 24% in the quarter to 28 March, by repositioning Coach around "expressive luxury" and Gen Z self-expression.
For ANZ head of brand Ebony Milosavljevic, the turnaround didn't start with a marketing brief but with listening to a younger customer who values authenticity, in-person experience and value. Coach leaned into its brand icons — the Tabby, and the New York collection's Brooklyn and Chelsea bags, the latter worn by Bella Hadid — to generate brand heat that flowed through to ANZ.
“It hasn’t actually started with a marketing brief,” Milosavljevic said. “It has started with listening to the customer.”
A recent QVB event in Sydney captured the shift. Coach launched a story-book bag charm at an intimate, book-club-style gathering where Gen Z shoppers customised bags with a local artist. The point, Milosavljevic noted, was no longer telling the brand's story but creating space for customers to tell their own.
She positioned Kate Spade as roughly where Coach sat five years ago, with green shoots already showing. The mini Duo bag went viral after Kendall Jenner wore it at Coachella, selling out across Australia and New Zealand within two and a half weeks.
On tourism, the Greater China and Asian traveller remains material — particularly in Sydney QVB and Auckland — but the recovery has not been linear. The local customer, Milosavljevic said, is the brand's "bread and butter" and the real growth driver, with shoppers now returning to stores for the in-person experience after a pandemic-era pivot to digital.
“We understood it would be really difficult to scale off someone else's creative vision — we were either not meeting our OTB, or meeting it for the sake of it, buying product that wasn't right for who the brand was."
Cale Suesskow — Co-CEO, VRG GRL
VRG GRL's bet: cutting every wholesale supplier to design 100% in-house
VRG GRL tore up its operating model in late 2022, cutting every wholesale supplier to design its entire range in-house. The restructure sacrificed revenue up front, but the payoff was sensational: a 14-percentage-point lift in intake margin and 30% sales growth.
At the time, the 15-year-old brand drew about 30% of revenue from its own label. Co-CEO Cale Suesskow concluded it couldn't scale on someone else's creative vision, and wanted clearer control of its supply chain, originality and open-to-buy.
The transition was a full rebuild. VRG GRL appointed a six-to-eight-person team of designers, garment techs and production staff within six months, moved from releasing around 100 styles a week to roughly 20, and saw lead times stretch from four-to-six weeks to six-to-nine months.
The brand has designed 100% in-house since early 2023. Beyond the margin gain, Suesskow pointed to AOV up around 30% over 24 months and retention improved 74% — the payoff of differentiating in a market where cut-through comes from unique positioning. A full rebrand last year codified founder instinct into a scalable system.
“The brands that are cutting through at the moment are doing so because they’re positioned uniquely in the market,” Suesskow said. “They’re not just doing the same as everyone else.”
VRG GRL is now moving back into bricks and mortar after years as pure-play. Following pop-up tests in 2023 and 2024, its first permanent store opened on Sydney's Northern Beaches — chosen deliberately because it was interstate, forcing a store model that could run without head-office intervention. About 30% of in-store sales came from new customers, in-store buyers showed higher repurchase rates, and online sales in the region rose 50% year on year. For Suesskow, the stores work less as standalone profit centres than as engines for the broader business.
Showpo's global growth engine — and the warehouse bet bracing it for 2027
Showpo has grown from a Sydney-born pure-play into a global retailer turning over more than $100 million across Australia, the US and the UK — with its two offshore markets now driving the charge. Underpinning that expansion is a new UK warehouse, opening ahead of looming 2027 tariff and low-value-import changes.
The UK has outperformed expectations since Showpo lifted marketing investment there late last year, prompting head of DC and operations David Ibanez to bring forward the warehouse to get ahead of incoming changes — including an EU per-item charge on low-value orders and an anticipated UK tariff regime. Returns, he notes, are the single biggest threat in Europe.
Showpo also opened a Texas warehouse in 2025, enabling same-day delivery on some US orders. The commercial case was customer experience plus a major cost reduction: previously, US returns were shipped back to Australia to be reprocessed and re-sent. With Trump-era import rules looming, Showpo had already pre-positioned US stock before the February changes landed.
On replatforming its e-commerce — Showpo's second migration in two years — Ibanez's advice was blunt: know exactly what problem you're solving and what you need to protect, namely revenue, customer experience and operational benefits. The migration coincided with the US warehouse opening, leaving the team "mildly not ready," but no order delays followed.
“The day we triggered the replatforming, I would say we were mildly not ready,” Ibanez said. “But the customer service teams survived — nobody quit, so that’s a good win.”
Asked what keeps him up at night, Ibanez named uncertainty — navigating COVID, tariffs, war and shifting US import rules while still being expected to grow — alongside customer experience and the constant risk of social-media backlash. His method for staying ahead, he joked, is partners, a lot of reading and becoming an expert on the White House website.
Three days from design to e-com: inside Lioness's speed-to-market engine
Self-funded family label Lioness — now stocked in more than 15 countries and across David Jones, Myer, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, ASOS and Revolve — has grown an average 46% a year for five years on a dual direct-to-consumer and wholesale model.
The two channels feed each other. A viral DTC moment immediately spikes wholesale orders, while a strong retail activation lifts DTC the same day — as it did when Lioness rolled point of sale across General Pants stores nationally.
Speed is the engine. Brand director Daniella Johnston co-designs around 80 to 100 styles a month, sampled within two and a half weeks, shot for e-com and ordered for lioness.com inside the same week, then in stores and online roughly three and a half weeks later. The brand releases more than 20 capsules a year, a rhythm the team has run for years.
On influencers, Lioness has worked with the same core creators for six to ten years, including Swedish model Elsa Hosk. The approach has shifted from chasing reach to prioritising brand fit, and Johnston keeps much creator content on the creators' own channels — controlling usage costs and keeping the brand's feed curated while still reaching the right consumer.
“We have to separate reach and brand identity,” Johnston said. “We’re driving two lanes here.”
The hardest call is colour development under time pressure: when a winning style triggers exclusivity requests worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, decisions land in a matter of days. The most profitable call in the moment, Johnston warned, may not be the best for the brand in five years.
"I was told things took a little bit of time here. So I said, right — everyone get in the Ferrari."
Melanie Remai — CEO, Cue Clothing Co
'Systems spaghetti chaos': how Cue's turnaround started in the server room
Ten months into the turnaround of 57-year-old Cue Clothing Co, CEO Melanie Remai has spent less time on product than on an operational overhaul she summed up on a Post-it on day two: "systems spaghetti chaos."
Remai expected a product and e-commerce-led turnaround after Hilco acquired the business from 57 years of private family ownership. Instead, with a background in marketing, product and brand, she found operations the biggest challenge.
“The back of house, it’s not the sexy stuff,” Remai said. “The sexy stuff is the beautiful new store and the $10,000 artwork — and it’s an easy trap to fall into.”
The starkest example: 160 systems housed on on-site servers, exposed to outage every time the power dropped. On Christmas Eve — a peak trading day — the lot went down. Cue has since migrated to the cloud and built a disaster-recovery site.
Customer segmentation work, which the business had never done, revealed Cue and stablemate Veronica Maine cannibalising each other — at one point sharing a core suiting fabric, manufacturer and price point, leaving shoppers no real reason to choose between them on the David Jones pad. Remai is now pulling the brands apart.
She was frank that Cue has aged with its customer, losing the younger shopper despite a 65% brand awareness (against Veronica Maine's 42%). The strategy is to keep current customers, reacquire those who drifted away and win younger shoppers.
New product lands in the third week of July, built on a reset vendor matrix — several suppliers exited, seven new ones added — and foundational lines that run through the season. Cut-and-sew knitwear, new to both brands, is already "selling like hot cakes," Remai said, alongside an event capsule for Cue and resort for Veronica Maine.
David Jones planned its loss: inside year three of the Anchorage turnaround
David Jones booked a planned loss last year — the cost of ploughing investment into customer data, loyalty and stores as part of its transformation under owner Anchorage Capital.
"We had planned to make this loss," said exiting CEO Scott Fyfe, urging anyone attempting a transformation to set fewer than 10 KPIs and accept that progress runs two steps back before one and a half forward.
Fyfe framed the turnaround around four pillars — customer, brands, stores and online, and capability — built on a framework drawn from earlier roles at Country Road and Marks & Spencer. Selling the business to Anchorage three years ago meant splitting 260 systems.
“You can only transform businesses if you actually know how to run them,” Fyfe said. “If you don’t understand the core fundamentals, you’ve got to get a really good understanding of how the actual business operates.”
The customer numbers underpin his case. David Jones now knows 85% of its customers, up from 16% three years ago. A Qantas loyalty partnership and the new DJs Rewards app — one million downloads in nine months — have built a 3.6 million-strong database, of which 1.8 million have shopped in the past six months, spending 29% more than non-active customers.
Some $250 million has gone into the business, much of it into stores, including new Bondi and Chatswood sites — the latter carrying 42 service points — while the website now draws 112 million visits a year, growing double digits.
Fyfe was equally direct on AI, calling it a leadership imperative. David Jones has given the whole business access to Copilot 360 and runs innovation sessions Fyfe attends as a learner, using AI to compress dozens of weekly trading reports into 10 decision points. Leaders who don't adopt it, he warned, will be left behind.
Out of administration and into the US: Seafolly's lease-by-lease rebuild
Three years after Seafolly was acquired out of administration by Bondi Brands Group, CEO Brendan Santamaria has rebuilt the swimwear label's bottom line by exiting onerous leases and reinvesting in brand — even as conflict in the Middle East shuttered its Emirates stores.
With Bondi Brands operating as a silent owner, the brief was evolution, not revolution. Santamaria invested heavily in design and brand, and went after the leases signed during administration to keep the business saleable. Around eight stores were exited in 12 months, with capital redirected into profitable sites at Miranda, Pacific Fair and Noosa.
Seafolly's 50-year heritage and presence in more than 50 countries is, for Santamaria, both its biggest strength and its biggest threat. Its largest market outside Australia and the US is the Emirates, where 11 licensed stores closed as soon as the first bomb went off — impacting the usual $10 million in sales it makes each year. The stores, including one in Dubai Mall, are reopening, though Santamaria acknowledged the economy there will take time to readjust.
“Our biggest strength is also our biggest threat,” Santamaria said. “We’re very proud to be in over 50 countries, but it’s also a very big threat to our ability to grow.”
Growth is now tilting to the US at the owner's direction. Seafolly has opened a flagship at Corona del Mar near Newport Beach, with three more planned in 12 months — deliberately on a beach strip rather than a major mall, mirroring its Australian roots.
On Tigerlily, bought 10 weeks after it entered administration, Santamaria hibernated the brand for 12 months before an August 2025 relaunch. A free Bec Judd Coachella post went viral, and the label is bringing in a younger customer without cannibalising Seafolly or Jets.
Jag exits menswear and bets on linen — and women's sales jump 55%
APG & Co has returned Jag to growth by stripping the brand back to its denim DNA, exiting menswear and pouring investment into women's and digital — lifting women's sales 55%.
CEO Elisha Hopkinson, second-generation leader of the 50-year family business, calls Jag the cleanest of the turnarounds she inherited in 2022. The team leaned into what the brand was known for — a cool attitude and denim — then built a year-round core around linen, the "sister fabric" to denim, in a market that runs warm most of the year. An experienced GM hire brought focus on the core range and social.
“Australia is nine months of the year summer, so denim is hard to sell all year round,” Hopkinson said. “Linen is the sister fabric to denim, so we built a core around better basics.”
The hardest call was exiting menswear, which was turning too slowly against the growth Hopkinson could see in women's. Capital was redirected into digital and women's stock, and online growth has been, in her words, phenomenal.
She drew a clear line on the recent closure of the Willow label, noting it sat within a separate APG division running white-label product and was not her decision.
On Sportscraft, the 110-year-old brand carries a perception problem — known as "my mother-in-law's" or "my grandma's" brand. Rather than chase a younger customer outright, Hopkinson is reframing its modern classics, conceding that execution, not intent, is the hard part. With traffic outside stores falling — Sportscraft down about 10%, Saba about 20% — the focus is window and in-store conversion.
APG is also testing UK and US distribution through a single partner to limit internal distraction, with Marks & Spencer live, Jag on Next and interest from John Lewis. The investment, Hopkinson noted, is stock only.
'Structural, not cyclical': BDO's verdict on Australian fashion's great sorting
Australian fashion retail is being reshaped by structural — not cyclical — change that rewards the fastest to adapt rather than the biggest.
BDO national retail lead Salim Biskri sees a market still growing, but under pressure. Digital has crossed roughly 30% of fashion sales — just under $12 billion in 2025 — yet long-term growth is forecast at a modest 2-3% over five to six years. The result is an execution-led sector where positioning, category mix and margin management decide winners.
“When a channel reaches that level of penetration, it stops being an extension of the business,” Biskri said. “It becomes the business.”
The market is also splitting by segment: women's apparel just under $10 billion, men's around $6.5 billion, childrenswear the fastest grower at $3 billion, and accessories a strategically powerful $2.5 billion commanding 50-80% margins. Footwear is polarised, with leather declining year on year.
Biskri's central thesis was the squeezed middle — mid-market apparel trapped between ultra-fast fashion from below and premiumisation from above. He put Shein at $1.5 billion in Australian sales in 2025, with one in nine Australians aged 14 and over buying at least one item in the past year, even as luxury hit a record $5 billion and Hermès grew 11%.
Margin pressure, he argued, is now structural: more than 95% of apparel is imported, while wages, rent, historic-high promotional intensity, currency and returns running near 35% all compound.
Biskri set out five imperatives — choose a value proposition, rebuild margin through cost discipline, treat omnichannel as a capability, embed sustainability commercially and prepare for AI-led retail. The story, he argued, is not collapse or recovery but reinvention — a separation between brands that react and brands that reposition.
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