Techlink :: Tech Practice :: Soft Materials

"There's the passion of the label and the belief that it could become something great one day. Adidas did it – they started from somewhere. Nike started from somewhere. So why can't Kia Kaha start from somewhere? We've got a brand – and it could be the same,"
– Dan Love, Kia Kaha

For Dan Love, managing director of Kia Kaha Clothing, it all started as a high school student in Palmerston North. Dan saw the popularity of clothing brands such as Billabong and Rip Curl and had an idea that there would be a market for clothing with a NZ flavour, and more particularly good quality clothing with a Māori flavour.

Dan moved on from school to university studies and graduated with a management degree from Massey University. So after taking timeout for a bit of overseas travel it was 1994 before he and his partner Charmaine took advantage of what they saw as a niche in the market and developed that original idea into the Kia Kaha clothing label.

Dan admits that the business really started as a hobby and was basically a case of getting some nice designs and putting them onto T-shirts.

"We worked out of a garage and sold them at different events that were going on. We'd make up 50 shirts and sell them, and use that profit to make 100 more ... and it kind of snowballed like that."

Although she has no formal background in art or design, all of the designing since day one has been done by Charmaine.

"She has a real natural flair for it, which kind of came out through the label really ... and she was able to express what she liked doing," says Dan.

In addition to the growing retail sales they started to get a few groups that saw the designs and liked the idea of having one as a logo for their kohanga, school or sports teams, so the 'team wear' side of the business became established.

By 1997 Dan and Charmaine were convinced that the business could sustain "a bit of an income," and started to work on it full time from their original retail premises in Petone.

"We started to do a lot more of what we call the 'team wear'. That's where people come in and order in bulk, and obviously get a better price, and we customise it in their colours and their preferred designs. We also started to wholesale and found that a lot of shops were interested in stocking our product,." explains Dan.

At that stage all of the company's production work was outsourced. In 1998 they developed their own website – a move which would position the company in what would become a growing international market.

"So we'd gone from a hobby to a fully blown business," says Dan. "We had everything in place. We started building and growing quite nicely and could start bringing on more people." A full-time assistant was employed to look after their Petone shop, and a new shop, with two more assistants, was opened in Wellington city.

The Kia Kaha label quickly expanded to cover a range of T-shirts, polos, caps, beanies, cargo pants, hooded sweatshirts, polar fleeces, jackets, track pants and 100% New Zealand lambswool jerseys.

However, in 2003 a new direction opened up when golfer Michael Campbell approached the company through his management group with an exciting proposition. At that stage Michael was reviewing his existing sponsorship arrangements with golfing equipment and clothing suppliers and saw an opportunity to develop his own clothing label and to build his own brand.

"He wanted a Māori label – a Māori brand to take his Māori identity to the world – and he saw us as the leading Māori clothing label."

Michael had been a fan of Kia Kaha for years, and had Kia Kaha clothing sent over to him in Europe and the US for his personal wear. But because of his existing sponsorship commitments wasn't able to wear the label on the golf course.

Michael Campbell in Kia Kaha designs

"We offered to come up with a label and design garments in Michael's name, in association with Kia Kaha. So we went with 'Cambo' – which is his nickname, and took it from there," explains Dan.

The Cambo label was launched, appropriately, at the New Zealand Open Golf Championship and the new range of clothing quickly became available in over 300 golf shops in New Zealand. However, Dan says that when Michael Campbell became the first New Zealand golfer to win the US Open Championship in 2005 international sales took off. On his final round he wore a Kia Kaha polo featuring a mangopare (hammerhead shark), a symbol of strength and determination. Orders for that shirt skyrocketed.

"We've now got a distributor in Australia and distributors in the United States. We're talking to Canada, Dubai, South Africa, the UK and Japan, and we hope to have distributors on board by the end of 2006."

At New Zealand Fashion Week in 2005 the company launched a third label – Charmaine Love. This followed on from Charmaine's success at the 2004 Westfield Style Pacifika in Auckland where she took out the supreme award. She also won awards in the 'menswear' and 'three piece collection' categories. The new label is now well on its way, with Charmaine establishing herself as the designer of choice to a string of international movie and music celebrities.

From its earliest days Kia Kaha prided itself on being New Zealand made, outsourcing production work to sewing plants in the Wellington region. However, Dan concedes that the rapid increase in wholesale and retail sales has necessitated some changes, with work now being outsourced to China and Fiji.

"But when it comes to the team wear and group stuff, most of that is made in New Zealand. We've got a small factory in Upper Hutt that does some sewing. Other stuff goes to different places in New Zealand. For example there's a couple of companies in Christchurch that have the machinery and are very good at making up the jackets."

On the production side, cost is obviously a big issue but turnaround time between ordering and getting stock onto the shop floor can be equally important – particularly when large volumes are ordered from overseas suppliers in countries such as China.

"The quantities are that much bigger, and the lead times are a lot greater. But at the end of the day its just a matter of being organised and being ahead of yourself – which is hard to do sometimes."

Production planning used to be done on a seasonal basis – summer/winter. However the rapid rise in international sales has meant a move to a yearly planning cycle.

"With the seasons being very different we now plan for a broader range covering a bit of winter and a bit of summer."

The first stage in the annual process is the completion of the graphics for the new designs. The graphics are sent off to the production plants and a set of sample items are produced and sent back for evaluation.

All design and production decisions are made by Dan and Charmaine. "We'll look at them and say things like: 'Yes that's fine... but we want this to be a bit darker' or, 'This stitching isn't in the right place'. We'll try the samples on people, making sure they're the right fit and everything."

A second set of samples are usually all that is required to firm up on the design and then the numbers required are finalised.

"Everybody buys T-shirts, so our focus usually goes on the T-shirt side ... followed by jackets ... but we've also got to make sure we offer a variety of products, so that the customer has a range of buying options and doesn't just come in and see T-shirts and that's it. In terms of the colours – we look at the fashion trends and what's happening and take it from there."

Decisions on the quantities required are most often based on the previous years sales.

Ensuring a high quality product has underpinned production from the earliest days and so quality control procedures are a key aspect of all production procedures. For off-shore bulk production in China, the company uses quality control people based in Hong Kong .

"They go across to China and check each batch of the product before it comes over here. We pay them a percentage to do the quality control and it means that we don't have to whip across there and check it every time its getting bagged up or packed up. If it comes over and it's incorrect, then they are responsible for it."

The New Zealand produced material comes through the company base in Petone where staff go through all incoming stock for a final check on the quality before it is sent out.

With three different clothing ranges on the market, and all now available wholesale, there is a wide range of retailers for the company to focus on.

"Obviously they'll go into different areas," says Dan. "The golf shops aren't that interested in the Charmaine Love or Kia Kaha lines, and a lot of the street wear places are interested in the Kia Kaha and a bit of the Charmaine Love but not in the golf wear. And then with all of them we can do bulk orders and team wear."

"An example would be New Zealand Hockey. We're doing the Black Sticks – the men's and women's teams for the Commonwealth games all had Kia Kaha gear on. Also TVNZ – they didn't want the sportswear for Geoff Bryan's gear, but went for Charmaine Love. But in saying that, they also went for Kia Kaha jackets for the crew and their camera people as well."

A constant issue for companies such as Kia Kaha is that of ensuring a sufficient cash flow to maintain production levels.

"You've got to pay for everything before you get paid and that's always been an issue. Its not so bad now, but it certainly was when we were building up," says Dan.

Other key decisions have centred on how much of their production to outsource to other companies and how much to retain in-house.

"That's an ongoing issue. How much do we do ourselves? How many people to sew do we employ? Do we do all our own printing for the team wear? What are the economics? Is there too much involved in doing it all, too much hassle? How fast should we be expanding production? Are we stretching our resources too wide? Those types of decisions are having to be made all the time."

Dan admits that at one stage he and Charmaine were doing too many things themselves and some aspects of the business were getting stretched.

"We've had to bring people in to manage certain areas, which has been vital. Its easy to say that we should have done that right from the start, but at the end of the day if you don't have the resources to do it, then you can't do it."

Somewhat surprisingly, for a business of this nature, design issues have caused few problems.

"We've had the odd person say, 'Hey that looks like my design' or 'I did one like that', but over all the years we've been involved with the company that's only happened two or three times."

Over the time the business has been operating Dan has seen a number of significant developments in terms of the materials used.

"Cottons were used for the T-shirts we were doing back at the start, and that's now changed. There's the quick dry kind of fabric with a wickable yarn, which brings the moisture out. That's what everyone wants when they're playing sport now. The other area is the double mercerized cotton, golf polos are made out of that usually, and everyone wants it. It's a very fine yarn and very technical, which is a new development for us."

However, despite significant changes in materials, production methods haven't changed too much.

"The actual producing of it is much the same – the main difference is an improved quality in the final garment. All the material development and all the testing is done on the fabric side."

While there an increasing amount of production is coming from offshore, Dan believes there will always be a need for a production capability in New Zealand.

"There are certain things that you need that you can't do overseas. I can't ring up China and say that I need 20 tracksuits for the Petone lawn bowls team going to the nationals – with their logo on it. They'll say to me, 'Make it 2,000 units and we'll look at it'. So there's always going to be a place for satisfying that type or order. And it's not just as small as 20 units, it could be 200 units. Even for 500 it's more economical to do it here sometimes."

Kia Kaha continues to lead the way in the sports and street wear fashions in New Zealand and with the additio of golf and high fashion apparel has a growing international reputation. The three distinctive labels are now available through wholesale, retail, team wear and also through the internet – such as the Cambo experience has shown is 'scalefree' – a market without limits. In addition Kia Kaha shops also stock a range of of pounamu (greenstone), Paua jewellery, bone carvings, Māori artworks, paintings and traditional carvings.

"We have indentified three different businesses within the one company – teamwear, wholesale and retail – that we're going to run as separate entities.

"We now have a manager overseeing the teamwear side of the business. Under him are the production people, sales representatives and so on. We want to build teamwear up as a self-funding stand-alone business based in Upper Hutt, where we're going to be upgrading the printing and the sewing machine facilities and adding an embroidery capability as well so we're not outsourcing.

"On the wholesale side of things we've got a wholesale manager who's looking after all of the 300-odd shops in New Zealand – and that's only with Cambo at the moment. They haven't got Kia Kaha or the Charmaine Love items, so we'd expect that to lift up to at least 500 within the next months once all that range is in."

"So that's how we see the way forward. International distribution is quite important for us. There's a lot of interest and demand from overseas distributors, wanting to take our ranges to their countries. So a lot of homework has to go into that to make sure it's done correctly."

With the business growing to a stage where over 20 administration, retail and production staff are employed you might expect Dan to have more time to himself. However this is far from the truth.

"I've certainly brought people on to look after certain areas, but the fact is I like to be involved and find out exactly what's going on. So the actual physical time may be a bit less but I find that the mental time is the same. I'm consciously thinking ahead all the time."

"I guess I'm an entrepreneur. I've seen a market niche and an opportunity and gone for it. Things like 'risk taking' have definitely been there, and the 'never give up attitude' that people say has to be there. Passion and drive have been important things for me, though. In the end I wouldn't change anything – it's brought a lot of tough times but the rewards have been worth it."

While Dan concedes that his degree course has undoubtedly contributed to the success of the company, he is convinced that the practical on-the-job learning has been the most influential contributor to the rapid growth of the business.

"When we started out my feeling was that the whole point about having a Māori label was to unify New Zealand in some way. Back then I used to go to some places with a few Māori T-shirts and would get rejected constantly because they thought it wasn't going to sell. There's been a change of attitude within mainstream New Zealand over the last 10 to 15 years. There's a pride in our heritage, pride in being New Zealanders and in the Māori element as well. It's incorporating where we've come from as a country, and it's now acceptable, and fashionable for people of non-Māori decent to wear the product."
– Dan Love, Kia Kaha