This is an episode of the Glossy Fashion Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the fashion industry. More from the series →
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Since launching nine years ago in Byron Bay, Australia, Nagnata has been evolving from a local “movement wear” brand, focused on premium-knit activewear styles, to a global lifestyle brand selling categories including ready-to-wear, swimwear and menswear. More categories are coming next year, as are the brand’s first international stores.
According to founder Laura May Gibbs, who joined the Glossy Podcast this week, Nagnata has its sights set on a New York store, following a successful experience hosting a Soho pop-up in September. The U.S. is Nagnata’s second-largest market, following Australia, thanks in part to the brand’s retail partners which have worked wonders for awareness. They currently include Bergdorf Goodman, Ssense and Louisaviaroma, plus Net-a-Porter’s support gave the brand legs early on.
It’s not bad for a brand that has been completely self-funded.
On the podcast episode, Gibbs discusses Nagnata’s values-driven processes, which have earned it a dedicated fan following. She also discusses its growth plans and its Patagonia-like holiday strategy. Highlights from the episode, below, have been lightly edited for clarity.
The Patagonia effect
“Patagonia is such an incredible example of a lifestyle brand that is so true to their values and their brand pillars. And it was definitely an inspiration for me. It’s obviously a very different style of product and a different level of product, and we have much more of a fashion direction to our brand. But when I was looking around in those early days, there were only a handful of brands that I felt I could look up to that were doing things differently in the space — more consciously and with integrity. Patagonia was one of them. What I love about Patagonia, and where I think Nagnata has a similar relationship, is it’s really built around activities that people are passionate about, which just offers a beautiful doorway. For example, we host retreats now — we’ve done two retreats this year. So we’re able to connect with our community beyond clothing and beyond this digital space, and share practices that really help with wellbeing. We do yoga, dance, movement, meditation — all kinds of amazing things on these retreats. And people also are just naturally wearing and experiencing the brand. So, in that sense, it’s a little similar to the world of Patagonia and all of their environmental work — they’re really true to that. … We do a lot of philanthropic work, which is very close to my heart. … If I’m going to spend my time on something and build a brand, … I want it to give back to the community and be something that I would stay engaged with, that would have purpose for myself.”
Retail expansion in the US
“It was so amazing to be able to have a pop-up space in New York [in September] where a lot of our diehard customers that had followed us for years or have just been buying [from us] online were able to come down and try the whole collection and chat with us and just get to know the brand more. That was the main reason for wanting to host that in New York. … New York has a slightly different style and a slightly different customer that’s so relevant to us. The New York woman is a working woman and she’s busy, but she’s still working out before or after work every day. She needs those functional garments and she wants to look chic. She’s really similar to our customer [in Australia], but we just hadn’t really been able to focus on her in the same way that we had been in L.A. with events. … A permanent store in New York is a dream. We definitely were testing the waters for a retail store. I would actually place a retail store in New York before we do L.A. For retail, there’s a lot more happening in New York, with people out and about shopping the streets, walking the streets. That’s what I love about New York — that you still hit the streets and you discover stores. And I love in-person shopping. … Retail is still really important for the brand. And we’re just about to open our second store here in Australia, in Sydney, in a few weeks. For us, retail just does so well. It will definitely be a focus of the brand now, in the next three to five years, to open quite a few retail stores, and definitely around the world. America would be the second country after Australia, once we get our operations running smoothly here.”
Opting out of Black Friday
“We’ve never done Black Friday. It’s kind of gross. When we launched, we had the mantra of “Movements, not seasons.” And that was really our pushback on seasonality. For the first couple of years, we only did two collections a year. … Slowly, we’ve built more collections, but we really try and have this free approach to seasonality where we are not producing just for the sake of showing buyers a collection if we don’t think we can sell it and if we can’t afford the production. We did not do any kind of discounting for the first six or seven years of the brand, and that was because I didn’t want to devalue these products. … We develop all of our own fabrics, we buy the yarn — we dye it, we knit it. Our production lines are longer than a brand that may just buy a fabric that’s already made. And it takes us a year or a year and a half to get products into the market. So the thought of selling at full price for three months and then slashing [prices] was absurd. So when we would work with wholesale partners, we would not really allow them to discount the brand. That’s also why we built wholesale really slowly — because we had to find the right partners that would agree to these terms — or maybe only after six months they would discount colors but keep blacks at full price. It allowed us to build the brand before people were just waiting for the sale. Because with our cost price and our margins, it was not even worth it if everything was sold at a sale price all the time.”
