Menswear designer Thom Sussex has announced he is preparing to close his store in Auckland’s Grey Lynn by the end of this month.
Launched in December 2020, designer Thom Sussex says creating his premium menswear Thom Morison has been tricky to scale up when so many New Zealanders are driven by price over ethical design made in New Zealand. Returning to New Zealand after travelling overseas with his wife, Thom took the plunge to launch the brand at a time when job security was scarce.
“New Zealand is simply a challenging market to sell higher-priced menswear. In reality, I should have been charging 30% more for the quality of my garments. I was using same fabrics suppliers as Studio Nicholson and Margaret Howell who charge $800+ for a shirt,” explains Thom, who says this was also part of the reason why he was unable to wholesale and compete with mass-produce brands.
“Post-pandemic, it slowly became an uphill battle to deliver the quality I wanted to achieve. I had to be hands-on with everything. I felt like it took all my knowledge in finding the right manufacturer and understanding what machines I needed.”
The designer says he spent 70% of his time pattern-making and sampling and the other 30% on “everything else that goes into making a menswear business tick, whether it’s fabric-sourcing, doing a photoshoot or organising accounts”.
“It wasn’t not successful, but it took a lot of sacrifice to get it to that point. Time goes on and your ambitions become greater, and you realise there isn’t a large enough community to rally around the brand and create a base to grow on a global scale.”
“We aren’t a nation of local manufacturing. Made in NZ means nothing globally like it does if there’s something made in Italy or Japan.”
Thom acknowledges that while his market for men who want to dress well is niche, they were highly engaged returning customers. “What I found was that the people attracted to the brand, 20-40% of them end up leaving New Zealand. That was one of the pain points of losing customers, especially high-converting customers.”
The designer recently made the announcement of the store’s closure to 100 of his top customers, but is keeping the brand name open for future opportunities while he takes time to have a break.
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Advertise with NZME.“It feels like this chapter has come to a natural end. I still love menswear, and I love the craft, but there’s only a small appetite for higher-priced quality items, and for a lot of the younger generation, quality doesn’t matter.
“Right now, I need to put the handbrake to reflect on the journey, all of its learnings and have space to enjoy other areas of life.”
Visit Thom Morison for updates on the brand’s first and only sample sale ahead of the store’s closing this month at 598 Great North Rd, Grey Lynn, Auckland.
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