Monitoring Desk<\/p>\n
You might not know Brett Birkill\u2019s clothing brand, but you\u2019ve definitely seen his wares \u2014 they\u2019re impossible to miss.
\nHundreds 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.
\nPrime 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.
\n\u201cWe started from zero and scraped together $100,000 from wherever we could, then we just kept reinvesting everything we made into the business,\u201d he told news.com.au.
\nWhile 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.
\nAfter watching his parents\u2019 once thriving Flinders Lane fashion business fall victim to the 1990s recession, he dropped out of Year 12 to help them rebuild.
\nLosing the family home and watching his parents struggle, then succeed at rebuilding from scratch, was a formative experience.
\n\u201cA lot of the things that happened during that time stay with you forever; they mould you as a business person,\u201d Mr Birkhill said.
\n\u201cI have great memories of bad times, if there\u2019s such a thing … While I\u2019m 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.\u201d
\nHe 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.
\nThey quickly realised that they wanted to establish their own brand, and discovered their niche after receiving an order for high-visibility polo fleece tops \u2014 a product that was about to boom thanks to the proliferation of workplace health and safety regulations.
\n\u201cAt the time, high-vis was not really in Australia, but you could see it everywhere in London,\u201d Mr Birkhill said.
\nThey spent six months planning their first range \u2014 a selection of 12 clothing items \u2014 and launched the business in 2004 from \u201ca tiny little office above a fruit shop in North Balwyn.\u201d
\nAfter 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.
\nFrom there, they bootstrapped the venture by reinvesting every cent they could spare, while building relationships with distributors and focusing on quality and service.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Monitoring Desk You might not know Brett Birkill\u2019s clothing brand, but you\u2019ve definitely seen his wares \u2014 they\u2019re 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-14669","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"\n