Monitoring Desk
You might not know Brett Birkill’s clothing brand, but you’ve definitely seen his wares — they’re impossible to miss.
Hundreds of thousands of Australians go to work every day wearing his high-vis designs, and now the company he founded on the smell of an oily rag has made him very rich.
Prime Mover Workwear has just sold to Irish safety clothing giant Portwest for $10.4 million, 13 years after Mr Birkill and his wife Wandy founded the company in a tiny office above a fruit shop in suburban Melbourne.
“We started from zero and scraped together $100,000 from wherever we could, then we just kept reinvesting everything we made into the business,” he told news.com.au.
While Mr Birkhill comes from a family that has been in the rag trade for three generations, he was out on his own when it came to starting his own venture.
After watching his parents’ once thriving Flinders Lane fashion business fall victim to the 1990s recession, he dropped out of Year 12 to help them rebuild.
Losing the family home and watching his parents struggle, then succeed at rebuilding from scratch, was a formative experience.
“A lot of the things that happened during that time stay with you forever; they mould you as a business person,” Mr Birkhill said.
“I have great memories of bad times, if there’s such a thing … While I’m not thankful it happened, I am glad I was old enough to see how that played out and be part of the rebuild and regrowth.”
He met Wandy in Hong Kong where he was sourcing clothing for the family business, and the pair started their own knitwear venture while in their 20s.
They quickly realised that they wanted to establish their own brand, and discovered their niche after receiving an order for high-visibility polo fleece tops — a product that was about to boom thanks to the proliferation of workplace health and safety regulations.
“At the time, high-vis was not really in Australia, but you could see it everywhere in London,” Mr Birkhill said.
They spent six months planning their first range — a selection of 12 clothing items — and launched the business in 2004 from “a tiny little office above a fruit shop in North Balwyn.”
After initially being knocked back for a $100,000 overdraft on their mortgage, they won a major coup when the Commonwealth Bank changed its mind and decided to back them.
From there, they bootstrapped the venture by reinvesting every cent they could spare, while building relationships with distributors and focusing on quality and service.
