Melbourne entrepreneur sells workwear company for $10 million

YOU might not know Brett Birkill’s clothing brand, but you’ve definitely seen his wares — they’re impossible to miss. Now he’s sold for $10 million.

Prime Mover co-founder Brett Birklill has sold his workwear business for $10 million.

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.

Mr Birkill has expanded Prime Mover into South-East Asia.

“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.

TAKING ON THE BIG GUYS

One of the key factors in the company’s success, Mr Birkhill said, was their ability to control the manufacturing process from start to finish.

“We had our own staff and rep in China, so we were able to use the very best materials and put features into the products without paying multiple levels of commissions and agents,” he explained.

Doing their embroidery in-house also cut the waiting time for deliveries, helping them win more customers.

Now the company sells 250 clothing items, has 50 staff and more than 3000 distributors and was turning over more than $15 million a year before the sale.

Prime Mover lays claim to an estimated six to 10 per cent of the Australia and New Zealand market, worth a total $1.4 billion.

The company has enjoyed a performance that will no doubt have been the envy of its big name competitors Hard Yakka and King Gee, which were bought out by retail giant Wesfarmers in 2014 after Pacific Brands failed to arrest a dramatic profit decline.

Wesfarmers is still battling to turn the brands’ fortunes around, with its latest company results stating that it is working to “mitigate the impact of subdued market conditions” in its industrials division.

Meanwhile, Prime Mover has branched out into the Asia-Pacific, selling into countries like the Philippines, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

Mr Birkhill credited his company’s comparative performance to its ability to compete on price while building in value.

“We’ve always been slightly more competitive, but because we completely control our production flow, while the features of the products have been better,” he said.

Mr Birkill and his wife will keep working at the company under Postwest, which he said won him over with its commitment to the wholesale business model and capacity to enhance Prime Mover’s range by adding new safety products.

“They do all the things we do, but on a bigger scale other side of the world,” he said.

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