One cool company
Huffer founders Dan Buckley and Steve Dunstan have street cred and so do the clothes they make.
Sunday, July 30 2006 || BY Caitlin Sykes
If there’s one lesson Dan Buckley and Steve Dunstan say they’ve learnt after almost a decade in business it’s to ‘keep cool’.
It’s ironic given cool is something the pair never seem to have in short supply. They founded their clothing company Huffer nine years ago with the simple idea of making clothes for themselves and their mates, and in doing so innately tapped into the skateboarding and snowboarding scenes they’re part of. And while Buckley reckons they’re “just a couple of idiots”, the pair’s design nous and entrepreneurial drive have helped their clothes find favour among everyone from snowboarders to film stars to fashion luvvies.
Huffer produces hundreds of products — from down jackets and T-shirts to jandals and underpants — which are sold in about 50 stores nationwide. The Auckland-based company turns over $4 million annually, employs 12 staff and is making inroads into offshore markets, such as Australia and Japan.
Buckley, 31, and Dunstan, 33, first met at a skatepark in Auckland’s Grey Lynn. Buckley was juggling clothing technology studies at AUT with running his own three-day-a-week clothing store at the now-closed Dockside Markets. Dunstan, a sponsored snowboarder who moved between New Zealand and the US, hung out at the skatepark between seasons. The pair struck up a friendship and mooted the idea of making clothes as a business.
Feeling he was covering old ground, and with a massive student debt threatening, Buckley dropped out of his last year at AUT in 1996. He worked for a fledgling clothing company, painted houses, then headed to Queenstown to hit the slopes and catch up with Dunstan. In his bag were seven pieces of snowboarding outerwear he’d produced under the brand Huffer. Seeing the gear firmed Dunstan’s resolve to get involved and the partnership, which the pair describe as the essence of Huffer, was born.
Leveraging off his skateboarding profile and contacts, Buckley secured orders from a handful of North Island stores. Dunstan did the same in the South Island, using his snowboarding cred. By early 1997 they had eight orders, each worth about $2,000.
Buckley had a super-cheap workspace he’d rented since his time at AUT and he and Dunstan pooled their savings, totalling $14,000, to set up shop and buy materials. The pair registered Huffer as a company in April 1997 and worked like mad to fill the orders. Then, in keeping with their idea of marrying business with lifestyle, they buggered off: Dunstan to the slopes of Queenstown and Buckley to skateboard in the US.
“Then we came back … and the clothing had sold pretty well and people were saying, ‘now what?’” says Dunstan. “We were like, ‘is that how it works?’ We had creative vision but we didn’t have too much vision in terms of the ongoing business.”
So they decided to make a small summer collection, which began the cycle of Huffer ranges. Buckley designed and oversaw production (some he did himself; some was outsourced) while Dunstan got in his car to sell. “I remember driving around the country with hardly enough money to get gas to get to the next town, with stores telling me that I was wasting my time and it was just a joke. It was pretty hard work.”
While they initially scored orders making snowboarding gear, in the late 90s the company rode a renaissance in skateboarding culture, broadening its customer appeal. In 1999 they loaded up a campervan with six high-profile skateboarding mates for a world tour of New Zealand, doing skateboarding demonstrations as they went. It was a great way, says Dunstan, to communicate the Huffer brand and get in front of retailers. “They saw something was happening and that it was alive.”
That year, however, proved a test for the lads’ cool. They got some big orders for their 20-piece range, with all pieces to be delivered on one date. Without any idea of cashflow forecast they simply got stuck in to making the clothes.
After chewing through a $30,000 overdraft, they had to get another for $120,000.
The pressure almost folded the young company, says Dunstan, but it taught them some valuable lessons. They began writing business plans and worked out a system for spacing the delivery of new ranges. They had always worked hard, holding down other jobs for the first few years, and only started paying themselves — about $300 a week — four years in. Developing a stock supply range — a collection of staple Huffer gear available year round — also did wonders for cashflow and the brand’s accessibility.
Huffer recently categorised its gear into three ranges: Collection, the fashion range, revolves around 100 new styles a year; Colour is the 20-item stock supply range; and Function contains about 18 pieces of snowboarding and outdoor clothing. Dunstan is keen to develop the ranges like separate businesses and -reckons the categorisation could help them more clearly target offerings — Function to the likes of mountain-eering stores, for example.
Campbell Chung has sold Huffer clothing since 2000 when he went scouting for an iconic Kiwi label to sit alongside brands like Nike and Adidas in his first Area 51 store in Wellington. He reckons a big part of Huffer’s success is that it’s shied away from the snobbery and exclusivity fashion brands often try to perpetuate. “There’s no other brand that I stock that captures such a broad, diverse range of people that buy and like the product,” Chung says. The clothing’s functionality, Huffer’s quirky design aesthetic and that Buckley and Dunstan are “genuinely nice guys” hasn’t hurt either, he says.
And those factors, Chung says, will help Huffer gain international success.
Offshore sales now account for about 10% of Huffer’s turnover. The company’s first foray offshore was into Australia, around 2001, which involved the same round of door knocking by Dunstan. He managed to steadily grow the brand’s presence until the company employed an Australia-based sales agent. Buckley moved to Sydney a couple of years ago as part of the beachhead and Huffer gear is now found in 17 stores in five Australian cities.
In Japan, Huffer was originally sold through the store of a friend, who is now Huffer’s Japanese distributor and sells into about seven stores. The brand is also sold in mates’ stores in Switzerland and Germany.
About 70% of the company’s clothing is made in New Zealand — primarily the brand’s T-shirts and sweatshirts. Buckley says the company prides itself on being design led and goes offshore, to places including Fiji, Asia, the US and South America, to source the unique capabilities of certain makers that can turn their designers’ ideas into reality.
While the idea of Huffer retail stores has been thrown around and “it’s probably not too far away”, retailing is a whole different business, says Buckley. For now they’re focused on getting their core business running more smoothly before pushing harder into offshore markets. As part of that consolidation, Buckley has relocated to Auckland and the company is implementing an online ordering system for retailers. It’s also looking closely at competing brands, how they’re priced and where Huffer sits comparatively in the market — all that more mature company stuff.
For all its success, however, Huffer is probably most noted for capturing the patriotic -zeitgeist when Orlando Bloom wore an ‘I love NZ’ Huffer T-shirt to the The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King premiere — then famously decided not to print more of the T-shirts, which were no longer on shop shelves, to cash in on the phenomenon. “We make decisions like that every day,” says Dunstan. “It was just symbolic of how we run our business.”
Buckley reckons the Bloom episode also hints at some of the brand’s success. “It was a recognition of New Zealand culture — that ‘I love NZ’ — of our country’s coming of age,” he says. “At one time youth culture was pretty wrapped up in what’s happening in the US. But today I think it’s the opposite. What’s happening in New Zealand is so much more relevant than what’s happening over there.”
And have the two entrepreneurs still got the lifestyle they set out to achieve? “Yeah, and beyond,” says Dunstan, who recommends surfing as an antidote to business stress. “It can be pretty intense and full on but I’m a pretty hypo person. I’m up for it.”