did it all begin? JH: “Before we went to market, it took me six or eight months of planning, researching the international markets, looking locally to see if anybody was doing the right job and we found that clearly, the plus-size guy has not been catered for. He has been very much an afterthought by retailers. We’ve been trading from November 2014 when we started our online store. Then we trialled two prototype stores in December in Penrith and Liverpool in Sydney. We wanted to make sure that if we were going to open this thing, our design and training were right – and that’s where we started. At RAG, we’re constantly looking for growth to expand our portfolios and we’ll go and find businesses, but no-one was doing anything the way we thought it should be done. Given our expertise in running menswear, we had a good understanding of the market not just in Australia, but internationally too. After all the research overseas, we decided to do our own thing, so we innovated ourselves to come up with what we’ve delivered.” IRW: Who is the Johnny Bigg customer? JH: “Our target market is quite wide. The core group are 18-40 year old guys and we have a secondary age group of 45+ men who still want to look good and dress younger and find a place where they can get good styling advice and come out feeling good, because they’ve rarely been able to in the past. That’s how wide it is. The 18-40 year old guy doesn’t take himself too seriously. He wants to look good and wants comfort and fashion. We want to give him both in a store where he trusts the environment and knows that you’re delivering quality product and the people styling you up aren’t just trying to stitch you up. The customers who started as teenagers in our other businesses are growing up (Tarocash, yd and Connor). Our customer isn’t just the large guy, he’s the muscle guy at the gym, the rugby guy and the tall basketball guys who have had to get their clothes tailormade, so we took a different view. This guy is like any other guy who just wants to look good when he goes out…it’s about bigger people with different shapes and sizes.” IRW: In the past, where have retailers failed when it comes to plus-size menswear? JH: “I looked at the US and UK markets and a bit in Europe and to be totally honest, there was nobody there that we felt was doing it in a modern and contemporary way. Traditionally, the plus-size marketplace has been very much an afterthought – old-style retailers who have never updated their designs, the product has been very daggy and conservative and the clothes have only been offered in destination environments, so you could never go to main street or busy shopping centre and make it accessible. The big or tall guy was literally being left behind and nobody was putting any thought or money or resources into him. No-one was offering this customer an environment where he didn’t feel out of place, where he could shop like everybody else shops.” IRW: Plus-size womenswear has been growing in popularity for years. Why do you think it’s taken menswear such a long time to catch up? JH: “We’ve been in menswear for 30 years and particularly in Tarocash, our most mature brand, we really saw the need for a plus-size range. You could see the demand happening from quite a while ago. And like anything, you can’t be all things to all people. If you want to be in a market or cater for something specific, you have to be specialised in it. There’s no way they they could do what they do for the normal guy – who goes from XS to 2X – and do all the other sizes in one store environment. At Johnny Bigg, we go from XL to 8XL for our regular range. Then we have the tall range for guys who are above 6’3 and have long arms, long torsos and long legs. In the Tarocash world, we kept seeing the demand for plus-size clothing, but we could only cater to them in a small way. The problem with the Australian market is that most of your retail footprints – we’re talking about specialty retail – are 130-160 sqm. You can only fit so much into a store, so we always knew going back many years that there is a demand, albeit six or seven years ago, it was much smaller. But if you look at what’s happening trendwise in the marketplace, guys have become much more aware of how they look and dress. Ten to 15 years ago, there wasn’t as much of a focus as much as women. Women have always been concerned about their looks, they’re always fashionable, they know what’s out there and they’re very particular. Womenswear was the natural place for plus-size clothing to start, so they’ve been in the market for way longer, because the audience was much more engaged. But men are now more concerned about grooming and they travel, international players are coming into the market. Men are now more exposed. If I think back to the last six to eight years, that trend has been coming in a big way. Guys know what’s out there, they might not have the best ideas in general about how to style himselves. There’s no doubt that we’re behind the eight-ball when compared to womenswear, but it’s moving much more quickly now.” IRW: What plans do you have for Johnny Bigg this year? JH: “We have plans for rapid growth and expansion. We’re at 20 bricks-and-mortar stores today plus our online store and we plan to open six more in the next two months. We’re entering the Perth market this time and we’ll have three stores opening there. There will be more stores in Queensland and Victoria, with a view to have 30 bricks-and-mortar stores by June and then by June next year, potentially between 46 and 50. Even when we did our initial research about how many stores we could do and how big the market is, once we started working in that space and understanding the customer and what’s happening in the male population, we’re not a niche business. For us, the plans are aggressive and we’re not limiting ourselves, so do we think we could get to 100? Yeah, maybe. We currently supply New Zealand online. We recently did an arrangement with department store Farmers and they’re trialling Johnny Bigg in 10 of their key stores. It’s across the country in New Zealand, so we’re working with them as a department store partner, but longer-term, our intention is to absolutely open stores there. We’ll also start shipping internationally via our online store. To be perfectly honest, we feel that because nobody’s doing what we doing in the way we are doing it, internationally, there is potential opportunity, but we need to make sure we establish ourselves and really maximise our time here and build a foundation.” IRW: What unique challenges do plus-size brands face? JH: “I think one of them is letting your guy know that somebody, after all these years, is out there, catering for him. Typically, he may have gone into Kmart and found one gondola with a few polo shirts on it or he might have gone to a specialty store in Bass Hill where there’s more conservative product and not been able to shop head to toe in a fashionable way. This marketplace is more specialised than mainstream. The body shape is quite different. If you look at Tarocash or yd, they’re average-sized guys. Everything to do with your fits and blocks in terms of your product are quite standardised, whereas we’re still learning as a business as we grow. We’re learning more as customers are coming to us and we’re starting to see things that we need to experiment with. It’s not something you can do overnight. It requires expertise in the plus-size space. Obviously blocks and size specifications are critical, but that’s not an overnight thing. It takes time, you have to understand the product and what the customer likes and doesn’t like and what kind of fabrications are better for this guy.” IRW: On a practical level, producing plus-size clothing costs more money. How do you manage the budget on your end, given Johnny Bigg items generally don’t cost more than other brands? JH: It’s not so much of a problem when you’re making 3XL or 4XL clothing, but when you get into 8XL, the amount of fabric you need is much more expensive. We took the view of ‘Why should we penalise this customer just because he’s bigger?’ We try very hard to absorb those costs. We don’t run our business at the same margin structure as other mainstream businesses in our group. When you go to market in plus-size clothing it is more expensive, if you’re comparing apples with apples. We try to leverage our infrastructure, we use the same supplier base as some of our other brands, particularly Tarocash. We saw an alignment with the Tarocash brand and this whole idea emanated from that space, but we always knew we wanted Johnny Bigg to stand on its own eventually. When we first started the business, we sourced a large part of our range via Tarocash and used the same supplier base where possible so we were able to get some economies. Longer-term,  we’ve had some margin erosion where we have sourced more exclusive product relative to our customer and booked it ourselves. Our customer is different to the Tarocash customer – he’s a bit more casual and relaxed, he wants stretch, breathable fabrics. We recognise that that’s the cost of doing business, but let’s try making the price a unique selling point. Let’s keep mainstream prices that show value for good quality, on-trend product and across all categories. Every now and then, there’s a price consideration you have to take, but it’s very minimal.” IRW: Tell me about the kinds of fabrics that you use at Johnny Bigg. JH: “In our dress and suiting categories, we use the same fabrications as Tarocash. It’s high quality fabrics that have stretch in it. Where Tarocash might have 15 suits in a range and four  have stretch, we’ll do seven in our range to give our guy more options. We use a lot of knitted fabrics. It’s trendy now, they give lots of stretch, it’s very comfortable and we’ve positive feedback from customers who love the feel of it on their skin. Sometimes these guys can be sensitive because they sweat more. We use a lot of 100 per cent cottons because it’s breathable – not for everything, because dress shirts need shape with poly cottons.” IRW: What’s the retail environment like for the Johnny Bigg customer? JH: “We have slightly bigger change rooms because sometimes our guy doesn’t necessarily want to come out of the rooms, there needs to be enough air in there and mirrors inside and outside. There’s also air conditioning, good lighting and comfortable seating – the rooms have to be big enough if a partner wants to go in and help them. The environment we made is a little bit more intimate. We want our customers to feel comfortable, but it’s masculine and warm. The product is always our hero and that creates the right atmosphere for the guy. It’s about making sure your product offer is good and catering for this guy.” IRW: Apparel has been struggling in the last few weeks in Australia. Where do you think it’s failing? JH: “I think ultimately to survive, things are tough and international players are coming here now. You have to absolutely be on your A-game all the time. You can’t afford to be complacent or take your eye off the ball. You have to be in touch with your customer, environments and people because you’ve got to cover all the touchpoints. The way we communicate to customers is so different to five years ago and it’s moving even more rapidly. You’ve got to provide the right environments for people to shop in, you’ve got to engage with them without being too obvious about selling to them, build a community, you have to be seen as trustworthy and you need to control costs. It’s a whole gambit of things and where some people get stuck is they may get distracted. We understand menswear, we understand the marketplace and retail and we stick to our knitting. Of course we have to continually innovate and evolve, but we’re very focused. Lot of people are reactive out there and blame the environment or economy or competition for their demise or why they’re not trading well. We try not to think like that. We think about what we can do better to improve, rather than focus on other people. If your product’s not right in a season, you can’t change it. You have one bad season and if you add having people or communication problems, it doesn’t take long for your business to unravel.” Access exclusive analysis, locked news and reports with Inside Retail Weekly. Subscribe today and get our premium print publication delivered to your door every week.