Frocks & suits - an odd couple

Sabatini's knitwear attracted orders worth up to $140,000on the first trip to Europe this year.

Boho fashion designer-types must be thin on the ground inside the 11th floor of the ANZ Building - otherwise you'd expect to see fingernail marks on the lift doors.
It's Auckland's HQ of the Government's care package for the creative arts, but it's difficult to imagine the artistic feeling remotely comfortable discussing their export potential in this environment.

The waiting area hosts the padded corporate chairs that are only ever comfy in waiting rooms and if you get bored counting the number of black soft-soled shoes padding past you can always flick through the small pile of tastefully patriotic coffee table books.

Yet those sitting behind the desks here at New Zealand Trade and Enterprise are widely credited with playing a major role in the spiritual revival of our fashion design industry. It's not worth huge money; estimates of export earnings of the notoriously secretive labels range from $40 million to $200 million, but if they're drinking our beer there, they may also be wearing our clothes thanks to NZTE's determination to push the lookbooks of Trelise Cooper and NomD to whomever is interested.

They are bureaucrats, so they are all about working the system, not creating eye-popping garments. Or as Judith Thompson puts it: "If we didn't have a Karen Walker or Zambesi we couldn't create them."

Thompson is NZTE's sector manager for creative industries, a title that belies her mission to push our clothes on to runways anywhere.

"We work mainly in strategic planning, specifically within a couple of areas. Design fashion is an industry with real growth potential and one with a very high profile, much larger than its actual economic size. It's an industry that not only gives a very strong message about itself — that it should be taken seriously — but it also sends a bigger message about New Zealand as a country, because through our creative skills in areas like fashion and film we have the ability to make really strong connections with global opinion makers in the lifestyle area."

NZTE was created in 2003 after a merger of the domestically focused Industry New Zealand and the offshore oriented Trade New Zealand. The plan was to create a single body that could nurture new businesses from creation to international competitiveness.

It fosters a degree of specialisation by dividing New Zealand industries into 10 sectors, such as biotechnology and agritech, and tourism. The creative industries sector, directed by former Te Papa CEO Dame Cheryll Sotheran, can be broken down into film, television, music, digital media, screen production, publishing, fashion design and experiential tourism.

NZTE has 48 offices worldwide, intended as outposts for gathering economic information and identifying new marketing and investment opportunities. The 2004 budget allocated the body $26 million spread over four years for projects that allow businesses to take advantage of market opportunities as they arise.

This year, NZTE used some of this funding to put designers before the buyers and media of mainland Europe at the Tranoi trade fair in Paris, mostly through the efforts of its Paris-based marketing consultant Zak Cole.

In March, four New Zealand labels: Sabatini, NomD, World and Ng, made the journey north with varying success.

Although the PR spin from the $150,000 trip trumpeted sales to 12 different markets and the creation of 20 new accounts, these were restricted to Sabatini's knitwear, which attracted orders estimated to be worth up to $140,000 and NomD, which pulled in about $12,000 worth.

Tranoi is a trade fair not a fashion show, so the designers were sharing a New Zealand-themed stand, and relied on lookbooks and a cocktail/exhibition event to promote their talents.

Even so, the interest generated in March was encouraging enough for the quartet to return again last week, when they were boosted by heavyweight label Zambesi, which had missed the first trip because of commitments in London.

But the opportunity isn't to everyone's taste. With delicate creatives being delicate creatives, some are understood to have declined the invitation for reasons ranging from rampant ego to "being seen on a New Zealand stand is just like so uncool" and "it would our damage our cutting-edge brand".

Thompson says labels always have the option to dip out, NZTE's services are offered not foisted.

"These types of projects need to be collaborative. We need to draw attention to these five labels while pointing out that there's something happening back here as well, but balanced against that is an acknowledgement that the strength of the label is the brand they have invested so strongly in building. It's a tricky balance to stand together in a manner that enhances their individuality as well."

Although NomD and Zambesi will be returning for New Zealand Fashion Week, World, with the help of NZTE, will instead be jumping the Tasman to appear at the competing Australian Fashion Week.

The Paris trip has also seen Sabatini excuse itself from the Auckland event, encouraging some within the industry to question whether such trips are worth the effort if they only dilute our own fashion showcase. Others point out that Karen Walker, arguably the local industry's biggest name, has missed two New Zealand Fashion Weeks without causing great harm, whereas visits to events such as Tranoi are a rare chance for domestic labels to impress the European media and buyers who won't make the trip south.

Caught in the middle is Pieter Stewart, who has been driving New Zealand Fashion Week since commissioning an Ernst & Young feasibility study in 1999. She has covered the accumulated losses from the first four shows herself, despite Government assistance, growing sponsorship and widespread media hype, but is confident the event's future will stay as black as the contents of the standard New Zealand city wardrobe. This year she's even managing to pay herself for the first time.

But Stewart readily admits she wouldn't have got to this point without early Government help. It took a year of lobbying, but the old Trade New Zealand was eventually convinced enough to stump up $750,000 for the first show at the Auckland Town Hall.

"That gave credibility to the whole show. Sponsors knew then that it was going to be a worthwhile event to be involved with."

NZTE's contribution to this year's $2.7 million event has been scaled back to $150,000, less than the total value of the cash and infrastructural support being provided by Auckland City. A further top-up of $250,000 has come from Major Events, a new Ministry of Tourism funding body created in the 2004 budget.

Obviously, Stewart has a vested interest in assembling the strongest possible line-up of labels each year, but she limits her public comments of NZTE's northern hemisphere tours to one muted observation.

"Well, it's good to show overseas, but it's also very expensive. That was the whole reason for setting up Fashion Week here, less cost to get good exposure. Overseas trips have to be highly funded and you're exposing only a small number of designers."

Reading between the lines, she sees some of NZTE's big ideas as counterproductive.

Stewart is pushing the agency to work with her in developing an integrated industry strategy. Although she appreciates the worth of their aims, she would like to put an end to conflicting marketing strategies and improve longterm co-operation.

"Our relationship with the Government is always evolving. We feed them a lot of information, economic impact studies, and whatever we get when we're overseas trying to establish new markets, and we debrief rigorously after each show with whoever the current [NZTE] contact happens to be.

"Apart from Australia and Japan, most of the inform-ation flows from us to NZTE rather than the other way around. I don't mean to be critical; it's a result of whoever is in the post. Their officers handle a lot of portfolios, fashion may be one, but they may be doing tractors as well. They may not have time to research that market.

"Our biggest issue is their personnel turnover. You build up a relationship, and close relationships are really important, we want to give value as far as we can, so you build up that relationship and then they're gone and you have to start from scratch. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a very good system of passing on that knowledge."

Judith Thompson says NZTE's turnover of 21.9 per cent lies within the norm for the State sector.

Maybe such issues reflect the nature of the private-public interface, because designers also don't seem to find the bureaucratic hoops easy to jump through.

Francis Hooper, of World, also says the relationship is a double-edged sword: "On one hand you can be dealing with someone who doesn't understand the peculiarities of the business, but other times, it can be great to have them there to keep you on the right track."

A few too many excited designers have tried to grow too fast, outstripped their cashflow, and gone bust. NZTE tries to prevent these losses by offering whatever business advice fledgling entrepreneurs need.

Hooper also speaks for many labels in welcoming NZTE's intent to boost creative industries, even if it's only because its political rulers enjoy basking in the success.

"Fashion is sexy, so for politicians it's good to be seen supporting it. If we were doing colostomy bags they wouldn't be coming anywhere near us; they're not sexy.

"But if they do see an opportunity to do something quickly, then they should be ready to get down and dirty with everyone else because if we do well then people will ask what else is happening in New Zealand. I think the whole country should put all its energy into our creative industries, if we stick to digging up coal and chopping up sheep, we're ******."

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