Manufacturing, wholesaling and retailing – Simona has done it all. Erin O’Loughlin checks in with the family-owned fashion business as its third generation takes control of the design room.
Inside the factory that belongs to the Simona family business, you can find quite an assortment of things. Gold buttons brought back from Paris 40 years ago are sorted into neat plastic packs. Patterns dating back to 1963 – when the business began life as a dress house – run along the wall from one end to the other.
And at the feet of Simona’s founder, Inga Fonagy, you can often find her pet poodle, keeping the matriarch of the family company as Fonagy casts her trained eye over new patterns.
Today though, Inge is not at her desk. Her granddaughter and Simona’s newly appointed head designer, Jackie Recek, explains why.
“She’s having the day off, which is very rare for her. I think we forced her to have the day off. She’d love to be in here everyday. At 81 years old, she’s getting a little bit tired.”
The odd spot of tiredness aside, Inge is still very much part of the family fashion business, and it was from her Jackie learnt the art of designing.
“That first year after school I pretty much spent the whole year with her, and what I learnt was amazing,” Jackie says.
Now 24, with four years of Simona design work and a TAFE certificate under her belt, Jackie has taken her place at the helm of the Simona design team. And there’s a shake-up underway.
“I think we just felt it was time to make it a little bit more fashion forward, concentrating on those fashion pieces but still having our basic range,” Jackie says.
The new Simona look will be unveiled in the autumn/winter 2010 collection, which includes 30 new ‘key fashion pieces’ among a total of 150 garments. The design overhaul aims to attract a slightly younger woman aged 35 to 45, and Jackie admits she has taken inspiration both from current trends and the Simona back catalogue.
“The animal coat we’ve done was actually a piece from about 20 years ago that my grandmother designed, and we went through the archives and found it. We just sort of thought it’s come back – that big shoulder and really glamorous look.”
The coat and other key fashion pieces join a collection of Simona’s best-selling item: dresses. This year, silk dresses and other eveningwear pieces have taken prime position in the autumn/winter collection, a deliberate strategy forged as a result of changes observed in 2009 sales figures.
“The core component in Simona was suiting. With the GFC, that’s dropped off a lot and eveningwear took over,” Jackie says.
Microfibre suiting has been replaced with silk and maxi dresses, many produced in unique Simona prints.
“We’re really proud of our prints because they’re all exclusive to Simona. [With] a lot of labels now you see a lot of prints that, if they’re not the same, are quite similar. But ours really stand out.”
The family’s desire to inject regular drops of Simona print dresses into their stores is one of the reasons behind the company’s other stand-out practice: manufacturing on shore.
The Simona factory in Chippendale in inner-city Sydney, together with five other manufacturers around Sydney, produces 70 per cent of the Simona label. The other 30 per cent is done in China and India, as are the other two labels the Simona business produces: Diffusion, pitched as Simona’s ‘younger sister’ and solely comprising dresses, and Simona Sport, made up of larger-fit basics.
The decision to stay partially on shore arose out of the company’s family ethos, though it’s not without its challenges, as Jackie’s mother and Simona’s sales manager Geraldine Recek explains.
“We feel like a dinosaur. We’re one of the last labels that employs cutters, two machinists, patternmakers, graders. It’s partly because we’re a three-generation family and my mother-in-law [Inga] still works here four days a week.
She’s had girls that work with her and have been here more than 40 years. On the one hand that’s a nice story, but it’s hard.”
It’s the specialty Simona pieces – such as tailored jackets and evening dresses - that are produced in Australia, with Jackie nominating quality control as one of the key reasons. She concedes though that a recent trip to China opened her eyes to offshore manufacturing’s capabilities.
“If we have a sequinned dress, our ladies downstairs use a hammer to break the sequins then stitch it together. In China, they sequin it after the dress is made. They’ve just got the technology and man power to do that.”
For now, Geraldine says the business is “hanging in there” with local manufacturing. But walking through the Simona factory, she concedes its days appear numbered.
“You’re just not going to see things like this probably in the next 10 years. It will all be outsourced or it will be offshore. We’ve still got our feet in both camps, which is working for us at the moment.”
The upsides of Simona’s local manufacturing include quick lead times – new product can be in store within six weeks – as well as the capacity to produce small quantities.
“We can add a lot of variety to Simona by just doing, say, 60 beautiful silk dresses,” says Geraldine.
Customers also reap benefits, with loyal Simona shoppers able to order designs in slightly smaller or larger sizes than what’s carried in store.
“It’s a good service. We have the factory here and can make allowances for that,” Geraldine says.
Then there are those customers who prefer to buy Australian-made, such as one Julia Gillard. The deputy prime minister was recently spotted wearing a Simona jacket and mentioned to Geraldine’s husband and Simona’s managing director, John Recek, that she was keen to support Australian companies.
“She would have noticed on the label that it was made in Australia,” Geraldine says. “So it is important.”
There’s no sign of the middle-age spread as Simona nears its fiftieth birthday, with each aspect of the business subject to constant revisions to keep it lean and competitive. The company’s wholesale arm got the chop two years ago as a result of the family’s desire to concentrate solely on Simona retail.
The company’s 13 retail stores, which includes eight David Jones concessions, are also subject to constant change, with Adelaide and Melbourne leases let go in recent years. New store openings are planned for 2010 in Melbourne’s inner city and Sydney’s Paddington and Mosman, and Simona hopes to have an online store operational by the end of the year to cater especially to its regional customers.
“We’ll just do it slowly. Maybe just have Simona Sport and Diffusion online because they’re the more basic things and the sizing doesn’t change,” says Jackie.
The rise of the family’s third generation into decision making positions has kept energy levels high within the business, says Geraldine.
“Jackie and our younger daughter Kelly, who is also working in the company, just bring a new zest for us. It’s really nice to have that. We’re a little bit safe, we’ll think ‘oh, that won’t sell’. Whereas Jackie will say, ‘No, let’s do something that is different, that’s younger, new’.”
While the family is proud of Simona’s age, Geraldine expresses disappointment the Australian fashion industry doesn’t embrace the label’s longevity with the same enthusiasm.
“John was saying... in Europe, it’s revered to have a history, whereas in Australia it’s not. It’s like you’ve got this perception ‘Oh, you’re an old company – you’ve been around 50 years’. Whereas you look at Hermes or Chanel – not that I want to be compared to them – they do respect that history.”
Nevertheless, there will be a party or two when the business hits the half century milestone in 2013.
“I have big plans,” Jackie laughs.