The House of G

ENA HUTCHINSON looks at the success of a fashion chain that brought prices down to realistic levels, and at the shy but tough millionaire who made it all happen.

Ten days after two aeroplanes demolished the World Trade Centre twin towers in New York, three new T-shirt designs landed in Glassons' shop windows throughout New Zealand.

One is decorated with the American flag, the second with a Stars and Stripes-filled American eagle. The third features big kiss lips, again filled in with the American flag.

Made in New Zealand at $16.95 each, these nifty white Ts with their cutaway arms are a bargain and, given the leap of support for things American after the terrorist attacks, uncannily timely.

Yet surely even a clothing chain with a reputation for a quick reaction to the market could not have created this new range and got it out there within a week of the tragedy?

Maybe, maybe not. Certainly, Glassons' owner, the publicity-shy Tim Glasson, is legendary throughout the rag trade for his sixth sense, intuition and ability to pick it right time after time - and do it at a price that entices women of all ages. The fashion coup is no surprise to industry insiders. They say he is the most successful rag trader New Zealand has seen.

So what is Glasson's secret?

A flick through the racks at the chain's capacious Queen St, Auckland, shop reveals that Glassons' shirts, sweaters and T-shirts are big sellers to a wide audience. Right on the button of the latest fashion look, 12-year-olds buy them with their pocket money. Smart young things about town team Glassons' tops - which they might only wear three times - with Karen Walker or Kate Sylvester pants. Thrifty professional women, stopped by three-figure price tags dangling off "made in China" fashion basics in the city's boutiques, pop Glassons' tops under their suits.

At this level Glassons has the formula dead right. Styling is neat-cut, non-frilly, flattering, colours black, white and a couple of the latest fashion shades. Certainly it is not just Stars and Stripes T-shirts flying out the door this spring day.

"You see groups of Glassons' girls basically wearing the same top but in different colours," says fashion watcher Christie Campbell. "It depends on the bars you go to. Down at Leftfield and the Viaduct all the girls wear Glassons, whereas up in K Rd you wouldn't see anyone in them. It's more op shop and designer stores up there."

Obviously, like all successful low-cost chains, Glassons has its fashion-snob problems. However, while younger punters may avoid the shop because of its cheap connotations, there are enough smart, sassy women who steadfastly buy their basic classic garments there on grounds of good sense, quality - and because most of them carry Made in New Zealand labels.

However, whether we are buying Glassons' T-shirts or not, according to Graham Boult, managing director of Consolidated Marketing, we all have Tim Glasson to thank for bringing down the price of the fashion T-shirt.

"For years women paid $50 to $100 for a fashion T-shirt and then Tim started selling two for $12. And other clothing manufacturers, even the more upmarket ones, had to bring their pricing into line."

But what about the bottoms? In the subjective world of women's clothing it is the skirts and pants, designed to minimise the classic New Zealand pear shape, that are the tricky number.

"Well, you can't really tell Glassons' pants from anyone else's, but I don't know anyone who can wear them," says Campbell.

On the other hand a willowy, 181cm tall 29-year-old, and a well-covered 152cm high 50-year-old, both have no complaints about the fit. The 50-year-old, who fancies herself as a 30-year-old and who never fails to makes a fashion statement, has bought a couple of other items at Glassons which she finds perfectly acceptable. Her advice: go for it.

Which is exactly the market Glassons sets out to target, according to the branding statement on its corporate website: "Consumers who are youthful in their approach to clothing".

How does the House of G keep up with the trends? Well, for fast-turnover womenswear purveyors from the Antipodes, there is always the Northern Hemisphere to trawl for ideas.

"At certain times of the year," smiles Boult, "Kiwi and Aussie fashion scouts run into each other at the checkout counters of the world's fashion stores".

Glasson's strongest talent seems to be one for finding what is working out there in the new season at one price point - that is a High St fashion store - make it in a cheaper fabric and sell it at a lower price.

It is amazing that this trick has not got him throttled by more ardent fashion followers. It could be a dull thud when you have just blown the budget on an exclusive garment in an expensive shop only to find something similar and half the price in Glassons. This technique certainly makes fashionable clothing more accessible and affordable.

But there is a lot more to it than just picking styles that are selling well overseas. A chain selling clothing as cheaply as Glassons has to turn over stock rapidly, and that means having more than just a gut feeling for what New Zealanders will buy. It means knowing how to bring it all together into "new stories", as rag traders call fashion ranges, season after season in the right styles, fabrics, colours and at the right time. That takes quite a knack.

Then there is management style, and Glassons is streamlined plus. Head office sits above one of Glassons' top shops in Cashel St, Christchurch. Staff throughout all New Zealand shops, plus head office, total a tight 350. Because every Glassons' window is the same, the company employs just one window-dresser. Stock is monitored continuously to ensure they keep it in the target 18-39 age group. A movement either too old, too young or plain unpopular and they can be out of that line in a month because of their fast turnover. Tim Glasson himself is involved at every stage.

So who is this Tim Glasson? Why is his women's chain a stayer in the fashion jungle when so many others that were around in the same era, Paulls, Warehouse Clothing, Underground Fashion, Dress For Less, for example, have long departed? Most recently Sportsgirl and Katies have folded their tents in New Zealand.

Glasson, who was on holiday from his Christchurch head office when I called, is certainly not about to give away his secrets. Even if he was there, he is seriously wary of publicity. A trawl through the files reveals only two brief and unremarkable sound bites from Glasson. Says a Hallenstein Glasson staffer: "Tim's very busy with day-to-day operations and it's unlikely, even if he had been in the country, that he would have spoken to you."

Other people, especially staff, are similarly tight-lipped, suggesting Glasson does not take kindly to people who blab about him. Local manufacturers who have worked with Glasson for more than 15 years are not about to share reminiscences.

However, with any successful chain you need a driving force, and insiders acknowledge Glasson is that force, reputed to be "a hard bastard", tough but fair - a major asset if you want to be successful in a business where you are only as good as your new season's range.

"Take Tim out of the place and it wouldn't run," says Boult. "He's the guy who has made it. And he reads his market like no one else. He's aimed for a market similar to The Limited, probably the most successful chain in the US." The Limited's 5000-shop success had been built on owner Leslie Wexner's infamous fashion philosophy that "all women dress to get laid".

Keeping the chain's overheads to a minimum is a key in keeping retail prices down - and here Tim Glasson excels. Head office is a lean operation. In the early days, when his warehouse was freezing in the Christchurch winter, Glasson would tell his chilly staff, "Just put on a bloody coat then."

Today his distribution centre is as sophisticated and efficient as any in the country. New styles are market-tested in the chain's top-selling shops, successful numbers quickly multiplied, turned around and dispatched overnight to catch the weekend trade in the 30-odd nationwide stores (11 in inner Auckland counting Dressmart).

Tim Glasson has run the business since the 1960s, when his father Charles handed over the company that had started in the early 1900s as an open-to-the-public warehouse. Today, at 55, he is proof that the old adage - most successful rag traders tend to be around the age of their markets - is not necessarily true.

"He's a legend in his own time," says Peter Jackson, "and even now that he is in his 50s he's still in tune with his youth market."

Jackson has known Glasson a long time. They met when Jackson opened the first Warehouse Clothing shop in Christchurch opposite Glasson's flagship store.

"It was right in his patch as there were no national chains then," he remembers. "We had Auckland and that was our patch, and he had Christchurch. I remember Tim's stores in those days, brown and orange colour schemes with plastic, bowl-shaped, orange lightshades. Then we opened in Dunedin and he went to Dunedin, we went to Invercargill and so did he."

Glasson's big expansion came in the late 80s after he bought a major stake in Hallensteins, the menswear business that has clothed men from boys to grandads for more than 100 years. He sold Glassons into Hallensteins and ended up owning 40 per cent of Hallenstein Glasson Holdings. Later, to reduce his exposure, he sold down to his present 20 per cent holding, making a reputed $37 million in the process.

Although Hallensteins has not yet managed to move into the cool fashion bracket like its impudent sister chain, Tim Glasson and Warren Bell, the chairman of Hallenstein Glasson, make a good team, says Jackson. "They're typical South Islanders: cautious. It took years for them to venture into the Auckland market, let alone the North Island. Even then, they didn't go into high-priced locations, they stayed right out of the malls for some time."

The same tread-softly approach has been adopted in Australia. When the company went into Melbourne in 1996 it tested the market for a year with one store, recalls Jackson. Now there are five in Sydney and five in Melbourne, all reflecting the Aussies' penchant for louder and brasher dress than New Zealanders.

Don Turkington, executive director of stock and sharebrokers Forsyth Barr Frater Williams, reckons Glassons have the market sussed.

"They don't blow their trumpets loudly, they're not high profile. They're growing the business there following the pattern of Michael Hill Jeweller - sticking to an established path in a measured way. Too many New Zealand companies have gone in big to Australia and then got caught in a big way."

Growth for the chain is most likely to come from Australia, while New Zealand will continue to provide the main revenue.

On Economic Value Added measurements, Hallenstein Glasson is one of the top performers in the country, this year coming in just behind Lyttelton Port and The Warehouse. Glasson himself is estimated to be worth $40 million minimum in the NBR Rich List, with substantial property interests, and some interesting property at that.

He has an investment in the Auckland Memorial Park, a private cemetery in Silverdale, north of Auckland, that caters, among other things, for people who want to be dead differently. It received worldwide publicity when restaurateur Tony Astle, of Antoines, announced he was building a mausoleum there as the final resting place for him, his wife and his car.

Perhaps an investment in a fashion website would not go astray. Hallenstein Glasson Holdings' corporate website is geared more to investors than consumers, meaning many young surfers complain they cannot find Glassons, and post messages in the guestbook on CyberMall's website instead. A young Taupo resident asks Glassons to open a shop in her home town because by the time she reaches a shop all the hot styles have gone.

Whether you choose to shop at Glassons or not, at the House of G's prices you can be sure no one is a fashion victim. In the fashion business, where thousands of dreams are sold at all sorts of prices every day, that is truly saying something.