Fashion label Sass Clothing launches Betty Cares Foundation to help women in need

A Collingwood fashion house that sells to hundreds of Australian retailers has launched a philanthropic arm providing clothing packs to vulnerable women around the nation.

IN an industry plagued by business failures, fashion house Sass Clothing is a notable exception.

Now in its 22nd year, the Collingwood-based company has grown into a major wholesaler with some 700 clients across Australia and New Zealand.

And it has now launched a philanthropic arm, the Betty Cares Foundation, providing clothing packs to vulnerable women around the nation.

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The foundation had its genesis in the Betty Cares Pack — a backpack containing a cardigan, top and pants selected from Betty Basics, one the company’s three womenswear labels.

“About 18 months ago, the Royal Women’s Hospital asked if we could help,” Sass founder and creative director Talitha Becker said.

“As we learned, numerous women in crisis — domestic violence, sexual assault, homelessness and drug or alcohol addiction — arrive at the Royal Women’s with only the clothes on their back and nobody to turn to.”

The hospital had little it could offer those women by way of clothing other than items from op shops.

Sass Clothing founders Talitha Becker has launched the Betty Cares Foundation. Picture: David Caird

“We decided we could improve on that,” Ms Becker said.

“Our design team chose easy-wearing wardrobe essentials suitable for all ages and shapes, and initially, we sent out 30 Betty Cares packs.

“They were immediately snapped up and the Royal Women’s reported that they’d made an enormous difference to the women’s morale.”

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Demand soon escalated and Ms Becker and her husband, Sandy Cameron — a former banker who heads finance, logistics and human resources at Sass — decided a registered charity would best serve an ongoing and far more ambitious commitment.

Mr Cameron said: “The Betty Cares Foundation means we can now raise funds in addition to our own contributions and we’ll be working with public hospitals and women’s refuge centres across Australia and New Zealand.

“We’re already sending out Betty Cares packs to 15 Australian hospitals.”

Ms Becker says women in crisis arrive at the Royal Women’s Hospital “with only the clothes on their back”.

The couple, who have three teenage sons, established their first label, Sass, soon after Mr Cameron was appointed chief executive of the South Australian Farmers Federation.

The move from Melbourne to Adelaide was difficult for his partner.

“The only job I could get was as a shop assistant at David Jones, so I said, ‘I’m going back to Melbourne’,” says Ms Becker.

She was 25 then, but already a seasoned fashion buyer who had honed her negotiating skills in China and India.

“Sandy said, ‘How about starting your own label?’,” she says.

“We launched Sass in 1997 after securing a $500,000 loan — three banks knocked us back before a fourth agreed to fund us — and I ran the business from my kitchen bench in Adelaide for the first four years.

“By the end of that period, we were selling to DJs. We launched our second label, Fate + Becker, in 2004 and Betty Basics followed in 2010.”

Today, Sass, with all three labels manufactured in China, has a multimillion-dollar turnover and a 35-strong core staff including its design team.

But for its owners’ tenacity, it could have all ended in 2001 when department store chain Harris Scarfe went into receivership.

“They represented 50 per cent of our business and owed us nearly $800,000 — pretty much everything we’d earned during the previous five years,” Mr Cameron says.

“We were young and naive when we put so many eggs in one basket and the key reason we survived was because we didn’t pay ourselves a cent until we’d recovered.”

Ms Becker, who has seen many fashion companies crash and burn, offers this advice to other entrepreneurs: reinvest profit in your business, focus on helping your clients prosper, nurture your manufacturing partnerships and above all, be reliable.

“Typically, a lot of young fashion entrepreneurs start with a bang and take out loans in order to expand or believe the hype and spend a fortune on promotions, then go under when the lean times come,” she says.

“Australia and New Zealand are fantastic markets, but if you don’t deliver orders on time it’s all irrelevant.”

essentiallabel.com/betty-cares