Fraser McEwing, the founder of Ragtrader, passed away over the weekend aged 86. In memory of the late legend’s incredible legacy, we revisit his article from 2012 on the birth of Ragtrader.
The idea of Ragtrader popped into my troubled head in November 1971, as I sat in my office in Melbourne’s Flinders Lane, fuming – yet again.
I was managing editor of Australian Fashion News, originally owned by Rupert Murdoch, but then sold (and me along with it) to Butterick Vogue Patterns, a leading supplier to home sewing. The company had already acquired Apparel, the equivalent publication to Australian Fashion News in New Zealand. Ivan was my new boss and he was giving me a hard time. Fearing I might send the entire group broke, he restricted my petty cash discretionary spend to $10 a week and then told me that we were wasting too much money on tea bags. Furthermore he said he would be bringing the managing editor of Apparel across from New Zealand to show me how to run a trade magazine properly.
I called in my fashion editor and good friend, July Paynter, and told her I was quitting.
“I’m going to Sydney to start a fortnightly glossy newspaper and I’ll call it Ragtrader,” I announced. She responded that this was a wonderful idea but quite insane.
Management studies will tell you that most businesses fail in their first year, but failure was not on my agenda. After settling into my future wife’s parents’ roomy house in the Sydney suburb of Wahroonga I had to talk myself into becoming a publisher. I had an artist’s rough of a publication title but no news, no advertising and no money. Wendy’s parents kindly gave me a basement room and a desk to work from, along with a threatening red telephone that would contact me with the fashion world – if I could find out whom to call.
I’d always believed that you could never run a successful magazine by sitting behind a desk – and certainly not one below decks in a suburban house. After a week pulling a mailing list together it was time to go and join my new printing partner in Surry Hills. My brother Brett had introduced us in Melbourne two months previously and we’d shaken hands on a deal. I set off in our old beetle, dack-dacking my way along the Pacific Highway until I finally pulled into the rough parking yard next to Highlight Printing’s building at the top of Cooper Street, Surry Hills.
On Highlight’s ground floor, printing presses thrashed and clattered their way through all kinds of printing jobs. There were five different types of printing machines that the company had bought over time, giving the impression of a working display of the progress of printing technology during the previous forty years.
Offices occupied the front of the first floor and behind them were collating and compositor tables. On the floor above was the paper store. I walked in and asked the receptionist for Laurie White. She took my name and offered me a seat on the hard bench against the opposite wall. I waited, imaging a nice office that would have been prepared for me, perhaps with a view over my future customers in Surry Hills.
Finally, Laurie emerged from the corridor scratching his head. “I wasn’t expecting you so soon,” he said as we shook hands. “In fact, I didn’t know whether you’d show up at all.” He laughed nervously. “Look, could you come back this afternoon? I’ll have to organise somewhere to put you.”
Put me? I suddenly realised my true position in the publishing world. I was a nobody with no money. And, on paper, I had no chance of success. All I had were a few vague ideas on how to start and run a fortnightly trade newspaper in an unfamiliar city. My only asset was that I couldn’t fall off the floor.
While Laurie went to find ‘somewhere to put me’ I took a walk around Surry Hills, then Sydney’s equivalent of Flinders Lane. Instead of a single dark, draughty ribbon, Surry Hills had grids of streets, mostly steep and narrow, but still teeming with textile and clothing companies. As I meandered around looking into their uninviting doorways I realised that I’d have to make this place home and the people in these buildings would have to become my extended family. That didn’t really worry me because I felt comfortable in the craziness of the fashion industry. I understood how it worked and the types of people that lived in it. Like Flinders Lane, only a few small factories still operated in Surry Hills, the larger ones having moved out to lower cost suburbs like Marrickville.
When I returned in the afternoon Laurie had found me somewhere to sit so I could fire up my budding enterprise. I was allocated the share of a desk opposite Ron Gunn, one of Laurie’s advertising salesmen who was clearly none too pleased at losing half his already modest territory. When Ron went out I cribbed a bit of his space and when I went out he took it back again – with interest.
I went to see people I’d known, albeit remotely, from Melbourne. My first call was on Osti, a then dominant force in slips and warp knitted triacetate dresses. It was owned by Frank Theeman – legendary for his wealth, his world’s best toupees, and one or two other pastimes I won’t go into here. His general manager was John Mostyn, with a larger than life personality and an intimidating presence. After confessing to him the dodgy career move I’d made, and showing him my rough of Ragtrader, I was ready to bolt for the door. But he stopped me with a hand on the shoulder.
“You might have something here,” he said kindly from inside his beautiful, bespoke suit. “I’ll tell you what you need right now, though. You need an ad. How about if Osti takes half a page to get you started?”
I wanted to hug him. But I stayed cool and said yes, I thought I could fit Osti in.
My first issue came out on my birthday on 17 February, 1972. It was just 12 pages. After then it bumped along in eights for a while until it slowly gained traction. But, from its first issue, Ragtrader never failed to publish twice a month despite plenty of crises.
The trade was kind to me as I blundered up a steep learning incline, trying always to offer controversial news, useful information and a laugh or two – and often stuffing up all three.
I turned apologies into an art form. People who wanted to complain were all offered a published apology in which I would administer a self-thrashing to Ragtrader. We ran apologies in every issue, peaking in one issue, which carried a whole page of apologies finishing with an apology for using so much space on apologies. Our self-deprecating attitude did, I believe, keep libel suits at bay. I was threatened a few times but only once did it come close to a court case. Morrie Fayn, then the maker of the cheapest dress in Australia, took special exception to my comments around the failure of his company. We finally settled by giving Morrie the amount of money it would have cost us to hire one barrister for one day.
When Laurie White could see that the impossible was actually looking possible, he built me a plywood office on the second floor, at the back of the paper store. Above me was a flat metal roof, but no air-conditioning. On a hot Sydney day I could have baked bread on my desk. It was so hot I often had to strip down to my underpants to ward off heat stroke. Not everybody understood my motivation, preferring to talk about ‘the naked madman upstairs’.
We moved again, this time to graceful but expensive offices in Foveaux Street. Finally, we bought our own tall terrace houses at 433 -435 Riley Street and stayed there until we sold the group in 1991. Our Ragtrader pottery sign is still on the wall of 435.
In the twenty years that I ran Ragtrader there was always laughter in the air. We didn’t take the trade too seriously and we were rewarded with its advertising, its stories and the good humour of almost everybody we contacted.
Anyway, it is now forty years on, where life is supposed to begin. I’m certainly way past that myself but, luckily for me, successive publishers have wanted my sometimes-outrageous views on schmuttas. I continue to love writing for Ragtrader and I hope I’ve still got some more to say that will stir a few people, offend a few, and make a few laugh.
Vale, Fraser.