Business Owners' Wisdom. Brett Kelly
that stage.
We’ve since become great friends of the whole family, but at the time, I said,‘Daniel, would you ask your dad if I could come out and visit you one night?’ His dad said yes, so there I was, aged twenty-two or twenty-three, and I’ve got all of five shops. I said to his father, ‘Your boy’s got a great career ahead of him, he’s going to go places.’ We drank some homemade vino and the next day, I rang up Daniel. ‘How did I go?’ He said, ‘We’re right. Full-time. When do you want me to start?’ He didn’t like school, he didn’t want to keep going.
Daniel ended up running the entire music group, Sanity, and retired at the ripe old age of thirty-four with several million dollars in the float, like more than several, a real fortune.
I had lunch with Daniel, his mum and his sisters two weekends ago in Victoria. I ended up employing all his sisters. And he married one of our regional managers. But you can’t retire at thirty-four so he went back to work at thirty-six. He doesn’t work in the group anymore, but he actually retired at age thirty-four. That’s the sort of approach I had back then. We laugh about it now because Daniel’s father says it’s the best decision he ever made. So that gives you a sense of the way in which whatever the issue was, there was a solution.
BK: So, where does your competitive streak come from? The drive? The deadly focus?
BB: To be honest, I don’t know the answer to that. You’re not the first person to ask me. My father was a hardworking, determined, wonderful, wonderful man. He died five years ago. My mother was really quite ambitious. I think it’s a combination of both those things, probably. But it’s hard to know. I’ve got four brothers and sisters.
BK: All different?
BB: We’re all different, but what I will tell you is that we grew up in a very loving, close, country family. I think that was very important in giving me the confidence and the self-esteem.
BK: So it was a get-up-early kind of family life in the country?
BB: Oh, my father would be banging pots in the kitchen at bloody 5.30 am. You know, ‘You get out of bed, life’s for working, let’s go.’ He was a hardworking guy.He had his own farm. It wasn’t a big business. It was himself and his kids as cheap workers – surely the classic story.
There were a mixture of influences, but I had the confidence to do it. But when I said, ‘I’m off!’ they told me, ‘Don’t do it.’ I mean, I had to defy every bit of advice that was coming at me from people who cared about me. ‘You’re lunatic!’ they said. I look back and think, ‘They were pretty right.’ I had no formal training. I didn’t know a thing about retail. There was just no reason in the world that it should’ve worked. But here we are today.
‘We grew up in a very loving, close, country family. I think that was very important in giving me the confidence and the self-esteem.’
BK: When you reached eight stores, you and your partner went your separate ways. Did he take those stores?
BB: Yes. I had a 50% partner. We did a deal. He bought those stores. That’s when I really started. I thought, ‘What do I do now? I really love this retail thing.’ I was without a doubt keen to keep going. And it really was a desperate need to keep going. So I looked around. Really, it was probably the first time that I thought,‘What’s the next thing? What’s going to be the next big thing? What’s not being catered for at the moment?’
I’ll tell you a very quick story. It happened about three months before we parted ways. We had a very fashionable store manager at the time and one night, she’s down there filing and her top’s gone, just like that. This is back in the day when bra straps weren’t to be seen. Now, of course, they’re fashion statements.But I looked down and she has a bra on with a strap that’s busted. It’s come apart like spaghetti. And she’s got this full-size nappy pin holding it together.
At the end of the night, I said to her, ‘What’s with that safety pin?’ And she said,‘Oh, nobody ever sees it.’ And she was a fashionable girl. That was the moment that really focused me on lingerie. I thought, that’s going to change. Bras back then were basic beige and boring. That’s what they were. I just thought, ‘They are going to be colourful. Fabrics are going to change. Women are going to care about their lingerie the same way as they care about their shoes or handbags.’
Then, three months later, I found myself looking for the next business opportunity. So I went and decided that it was lingerie. I thought that would be worth looking into. Essentially, that’s what I started. I bought a franchise store of The Bra Shop in Victoria. I asked my sister and my girlfriend at the time to work it, because back then it was entirely taboo for a guy to be in a store like that, so I couldn’t work the store. Then we started slowly to see if I could stay ahead of the trend of what lingerie was going to do. That wasn’t easy because everything was branded. A rep came in to see you and you placed an order. It was very slow and cumbersome, but it was the way it was.
‘I just thought, “Women are going to care about their lingerie the same way as they care about their shoes or handbags.”’
This is a true story. I figured we needed to sell G-strings. I was so nervous. Back then, you only bought G-strings if you were either a stripper, a dealer or a hooker or something. I remember ringing up my mother and saying, ‘Can you take me into one of these stores? Will you come with me?’ I’m a country boy. I couldn’t go into a store like that on my own and I owned a lingerie store! Anyway, she went with me and it was hilarious. When I think about how the world has changed …
I thought girls would really like G-strings, but I couldn’t get anyone to make them. Leotards were big, then and I was manufacturing the G-string leotards that the girls seemed to wear, but that was with the leggings. The bit that was cut out in the bum was wastage. So I said to the guy, ‘You’re just throwing that out.If I gave you a pattern, would you make me a G-string out of this stretch lycra?’
He made up fifteen of them. I’m not exaggerating, he made me up fifteen and I took them into the Chirnside store to see how they would go. I knew they were going to be good, because back then the fashion was tight and pant lines were not a good look. I knew that that would also appeal from other angles as well, you know, looking good for boyfriends and so on. So I rang up at the end of the day and said, ‘How did we go with those G-strings?’ and they said, ‘Sold out.’
BK: Cool.
BB: Gone. I was like, ‘What do you mean, sold out?’ I expected a couple to be sold but they all went in the day. It didn’t take long to figure that’s what our customers want. So we started manufacturing our own. That was very hard to do as I had one store, then I had another and then I had three. It probably took us five or seven years before the mainstream brands brought out a matching G-string and matching briefs. So I’m counting it as a long part of the story, but it gives you a sense of being aware of what’s going to happen and trying to anticipate that.Also, you’re going to break down barriers of what exists.
BK: When you had those three stores, were they all franchise group stores?
BB: They were. Then what happened was, Bryan Luca was his name, he had about twenty stores. He said, ‘Brett, you’re annoying me. You’re worrying me. You’re too ambitious.’ I was starting to get a bit boisterous about what we ought to be doing. So he said, ‘I’ve got four stores in New South Wales called Bras N Things and they’re not going too well.’ He said, ‘Would you go up there and have a look?If you want them, you can have them.’