KEY POINTS:
New York - retailer Bloomingdales is to stock New Zealand clothing brand Egg as the Kiwi company opens a store in Singapore.
Colyn Devereux-Kay - who owns the company with daughter Charlotte Devereux- says the US retailer is offering to stock the maternity clothes branded as "Egg for Bloomingdales".
The Bloomingdales order was initially small but would help the brand and establish Egg in the US.
"The US market is well covered by maternity and babywear stores so we are not extending the franchise stores there," she said.
Egg will open a Singapore outlet on July 27. The company sees prospects there, in Hong Kong and beyond.
Egg has 14 stores in New Zealand and eight in Australia.
Egg now exports more products than it sells locally. Devereux-Kay expects the expansion of the company into Singapore to grow its annual exports to 60 per cent of turnover this financial year.
She said with the high exchange rate between the kiwi and the US dollar it was a difficult time to expand into a new export market.
Margins were being affected but despite higher costs the company intended to keep 80 per cent of production in New Zealand.
While production was more expensive, the New Zealand-made label would help sales, and if the garments were made in China they would attract tariffs in the US.
Egg was founded in 2001 in Auckland by Colyn and Charlotte, who was pregnant with her first child and could not find any stylish maternity wear, the company says.
