Cutting her cloth to suit the times

Running a clothing business in Ireland has never been easy. The sector was decimated during the 1980s and early 1990s by low-cost competition and those who survived did so by becoming niche players. But even a strong niche may not be enough to protect a business in difficult times as long-established fashion designer Mary Grant discovered three years ago.

“The absolute low point for me was 2011 and it was the closest I ever came to closing the doors,” she says. “In fact, the professional advice I was getting at the time was to do just that and walk away. But something inside me was determined to fight for what I had built up and nurtured over the preceding 18 years.

“Initially, when I looked at how bad things were, it was terrifying,” she says. “But I spoke to everyone to whom we owed money and to everyone who owed us money and worked out terms with them. We cut back where we could and shed staff. What followed were 18 very tough months as we worked through paying off our debts bit by bit. But we have lived to tell the tale and both the business and I are much stronger for the experience. We now employ nine people and, in June last year, opened our first retail outlet.”

Grant is candid about the fact that, before the crisis, her focus had been more on the creative than the commercial side.

“I had my eye off the ball from a commercial perspective,” she says. “That has completely changed. I was always very ‘hands on’ in the design area. Now I’m the same with the business. I’ve become very aware of overheads, costings, cash flow, training staff to drive sales and setting specific objectives for the business and achieving them.”

In 2008, Grant won the Brown Thomas mentoring award. Part of the prize was the opportunity to open two seasonal pop-up shops within the store. On the strength of their success, she was offered a full-time concession in Brown Thomas in 2009. This outlet currently employs five people. “Winning the award was invaluable because it gets you so close to the realities of retailing,” she says. “Our ongoing relationship with Brown Thomas has been very important for the business because it is such a showcase location. They have also been incredibly supportive over the last few years. Working with them really keeps you on your toes because they expect a lot.”

Grant studied fashion design in Dublin and established her business in 1993, initially showing her collections in The Design Centre at the Powerscourt Townhouse Centre. The target market for her pieces, which she describes as “hippie romantic chic”, are women aged 30-plus, although she says new retail outlet in Newbridge, Co Kildare, has begun drawing in younger buyers.

When Grant started her own business, she employed eight home machinists.

"I kept producing here until 2007 by which time most of the industry had moved to outsourcing and it had become impossible to continue," she says. "Machining is very physical work and, when other opportunities presented themselves, the women moved on and the skills were lost. At that point we moved production to Poland. However, we still make all of the samples and some special orders in Ireland. Our ethos is the ethical production of timeless designs in luxury fabrics that women can build into a wardrobe of items that work well together," she says.

Before the blip, Grant was supplying 13 shops in Ireland and had some overseas customers. As part of her recovery plan, she withdrew from wholesale completely and is taking her time about revisiting it as a growth strategy.

“As a result of restructuring my business, I now have very, very good systems deliberately designed with a view to replication. In other words, I can copy and paste them to a new location,” Grant says. “If things unfold as I want them to, these new retail locations will include London and New York.”

Also part of the restructuring was the launch in 2012 of Bo&Mo, a new label from the Grant stable aimed at the higher-volume market.

“The most important thing was to protect the exclusivity of my main collection. But, at the same time, we were really suffering because shoppers were feeling the pinch,” Grant says. “We felt if we could offer something at a lower price-point that didn’t dilute the main brand, then as the economy recovered, these buyers would gravitate back towards the main collection. This is exactly what is happening. There are definitely small signs of an upturn.”

Also on the horizon is the launch of “alternative” bridal wear that will be sold under the Something Blue label.

“Hitting the wall in 2011 changed how I think – for the better,” Grant says.