Rickie Dee and James Rigden, founders of Kiwi clothing retailer Superette. Photo / Supplied
Business partners Rickie Dee and James Rigden were just 20 and 21 years old when they took a chance on getting into retail.
It was 2002 when they opened their first Superette store on Auckland's Drake St. Their vision was an "Antipodean take on the curated concept stores" they had visited overseas.
With friends' help they painted the open industrial space, which housed a cafe alongside fashion brands hand-selected by the pair.
Funded with $100,000 in loans from the bank of Mum and Dad, the store became their training ground, where they learned the importance of face-to-face interaction and building a connection with customers.
Back in those days, building the brand meant opening the store doors at 7am, making sandwiches and serving coffee, and hosting exhibitions for new brands as they tried to make a name as a business offering products that blurred the line between luxury and comfort, including clothing, home and lifestyle goods.
The young retailers set up shop at a time when few stores housed multiple brands in one place. Superette has been credited with building the local fanbase for Australian labels such as Ksubi, Bassike and Camilla & Marc, when they were newcomers to the local fashion scene.
The now eight-store business stocks more than 270 brands and is enjoying success with its online store, which thanks to Covid now accounts for approximately 40 per cent of sales.
Today, the founders are gearing up to open four more stores over the next four years.
Asked why they are expanding now given all the uncertainty about economic headwinds and household budgets being squeezed by inflation, Rigden says the pair have reverted to Superette's pre-pandemic business plans, now that Covid seems to be more under control.
"It's always been part of our strategy for the Superette brand to expand. Bricks and mortar and experiential retail is where we came from, and you have got to keep moving forward to get through this pandemic.
"Hopefully we are coming through the other side of it, and [expanding] Superette International is the obvious place to be doing that, because we've just got that one store which is trading super well," adds Dee.
Superette opened its international concept store Superette International three years ago, offering international brands that differ from its original stores, brands that are based further afield than Australasia, including Helmut Lang, Alexander Wang, Maxmara and Golden Goose.
The four new stores will be modelled on that concept. It also has plans to tweak and expand some of its existing sites.
First up, from October it will expand the existing Superette Ponsonby store, taking over two stores next to its site. It will then focus on expanding its international concept with new stores.
Those stores will open in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland, taking Superette's retail footprint to 12 stores. The exact locations and dates have not been disclosed.
Dee says the past two years operating a retail business amid pandemic disruption have been "super challenging", so the business had to be agile.
She says the online site had traded well when physical shops were closed, but that brought the challenges of having to increase scale quickly. The team also moved their warehouse to a much larger site in the middle of the pandemic.
"[Business] has bounced back now, but it definitely has further to bounce back," Dee says of the recovery.
Rigden adds: "We've still got a long way to go. It has been a challenging two years, for anyone I think, and that has been both in the business with sales, as well as looking after our teams and making sure everyone and their families were OK.
"I don't think it has been an easy time for the business and I wouldn't say we are in a better place coming out of the pandemic at all, but we have a great team that is really focused on continuing the growth of Superette.
"What the pandemic has done is brought everybody closer together. Now that we are back in the office ... everybody is very motivated and that is a great formula to move forward."
Rigden says pandemic disruption "strengthened the online side of the business".
The pair say that while a lot has changed about their business in 20 years, some things remain the same. The passion, drive and motivation remain, but the team of three back then has now grown to 148 today.
Dee says Superette has become "a whole lot more" than she originally envisaged.
"There's definitely a lot more planning and responsibility in the later years, but I think we are still very agile on what we're doing and what we can do. We have to be that way and having that small business mentality at the core of Superette is really nice as it does mean that we are adaptable to change, and can change quickly."
Retail today is a new world compared to what it was when the brand was finding its feet. There was no e-commerce, few Kiwi designers had their own stores back then, and there were few multi-lifestyle-brand stores, Dee remembers. "That was definitely a driving factor as to why we started; to bring something that was a little bit different to our market."
Dee and Rigden say the biggest lesson they have learnt over the past 20 years is the importance of understanding people and how important they are to the success of your business. "Surround yourself with the best people you can is really number one because once you get past a certain size of being able to do it all, in a seven-day-week business you have to have passionate people to work alongside and trust."
Retail expert Chris Wilkinson says Superette has become an "iconic" New Zealand brand that was the first to "truly 'curate' apparel and lifestyle products within an aspirational culture".
Wilkinson, the managing director of First Retail Group, says "people really love their sense of style and it's great to see their success that's endured and strengthened - despite well-recognised challenges in the retail space.
"Their success is unique, because they are not a 'vertical' retailer - designing, directly sourcing and selling their own products. The trend toward vertical has been strong and necessary for most in the apparel sector as that additional margin has been especially necessary with increased costs for retailers across all parts of their business. Today, the majority of apparel retailers are vertical such as Glassons, Country Road, Barkers and through to brands like World and of course the designer brands.
"For Superette, they've created a brand that people can identify with, trust their style direction and want to be a part of, while also providing a channel for mainstream brands to 'validate' and sometimes even 'reinvent cool' for some of their tried and true lines.
"Take, for example Polo, which some wouldn't necessarily associate with the hip and cool kids, but put that into a Superette store and all of sudden it's had that endorsement and renewed following. That's the essence of curation - and a way that this independent chain has maintained relevance and success in a rapidly changing marketplace."
Wilkinson says another factor is that the founders have remained visible and reachable by consumers. Their faces have become the brand.
"Shoppers identify with the people behind the brands and Superette have recognised that by continuing to stay on-radar, positive and leading from the front - encouraging evolution in their business and succession in their audience."
How has New Zealand's oldest department store outlasted its competitors? One word: family.