How tragedy and a love of adventure moulded Just Jeans’ scion into the king of Cool.org
His dad created the Just Jeans group and Jason Kimberley tried to take up the family rag trade, but a tragedy and passion for adventure sent him off in a completely different direction.
The Springvale Botanical Cemetery, the largest memorial park in Victoria on the leafy outskirts of Melbourne, is the final resting place for a who’s who of the city’s famed and fortunate.
Among its graves are those of former governor-general Sir Zelman Cowan, VFL football legend Jack Dyer and TV star Bert Newton.
One far less known is that of a seven-year-old boy, born to a family that is part of Australian retail royalty.
Craig Kimberley, his wife Connie and her sister Chrissie changed the face of Australian fashion forever when they opened the first Just Jeans store on Melbourne’s Chapel St in December 1970.
It became the largest specialty jeans retailer in the southern hemisphere and by the time they sold the business 30 years later it was worth more than $100m.
But until now an untold part of the Just Jeans story is Marcus Kimberley, the boy Connie gave birth to in 1968.
“Marcus was born with brain damage. There is conjecture as to actually how. Was the cord around his neck? Was there some congenital issue? That was never adequately solved,” says his older brother, Jason.
“He had calipers, he had a crash helmet, he would often fall over when he was walking and he had very little language. We had a program where 120 of mum and dad’s friends would rotate through the house to help.
“They would educate and exercise him, moving him so his muscles wouldn’t waste away because he was so skinny. It was a real hive of activity in our house and that was very much centred around Marcus.”
Marcus died in 1975. His older brother was just eight years old.
For years he had looked out for Marcus, stood up to those who sniggered at the strange things on his legs, the weird helmet on his head and the way he walked.
To Jason, Marcus was the dear brother who he so wished could have been spared the trials he faced in his short life.
“I was very protective of him. I’d see a kid mocking him or saying something on the other side of the street and would cross the road and challenge them,” he says proudly, as a tear trickles down his right cheek.
“I’ve always been really keen on the underdog and making sure that those least able to look after themselves get well supported.”
Until the Kimberley family sold its interest in what became known as Just Group in 2001, Jason helped manage the company.
But during those years and in the decade after the sale, he also had 10 different careers in fashion, photography, warehousing, stockbroking, wholesale, building, fruit picking, cattle herding, roof repairs, and was for a time even as a restaurateur.
In 2008 he found his calling in life – a passion shaped by his experiences with his younger brother. It was to educate school-aged children about an environmentally sustainable future.
Kimberley initially launched the project, then known as Cool Melbourne, into 10 primary and secondary schools.
Since then his organisation, now known as Cool.org – formerly Cool Australia – has provided more than 175,000 educators with free educational content and activities to students and teachers, from kindergarten to year 10.
“I think my experience with Marcus is one of the main reasons why I’m doing what I’m doing in education. It is about the democratisation of quality education so the have nots can get as big a go as the haves,” the now 56 year old says.
“My experience with my brother has really informed a lot of who I am. I really understand you are who you are because of where you were when and all the things that influence you at different stages of your life.
“You just absorb them and you become who you are because of those life experiences and those friendships and relationships. So I’ve always been for the underdog.”
The making of Mr Cool
In July this year Kimberley relaunched his business with the name Cool.org. He’d been after the domain name for years.
“I always thought that would be a great international brand,” he says.
It had been owned since 1992 by a lecturer in anthropological documentary filmmaking at the University of Southern California named Dr Jennifer Cool.
Over the years she had been offered six-figure sums for the name, but was never a seller.
Kimberley sought her out and emailed her for many years before eventually convincing her to part with it for the cool sum of $US20,000. But after an administrative mishap, he had to wait some time before the sale date finally arrived.
He was having breakfast with his father in early February 2020 at the Chateau Marmont hotel on Sunset Boulevard in West Hollywood, just days after they had fulfilled a lifelong dream to attend the Super Bowl – which that year was staged at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Florida,
“I remember the moment the message came through on my phone that she had sold. I just burst into tears in this restaurant,” he says. “The waiter came up and said ‘Sir, is everything okay?’. It was a special day.”
Cool is raising $2.6m to support its new subscription product called Cool+, an unlimited access pass to premium teaching content.
“We’ve raised $1.5m and we’ve got another $1.1m to get to the $2.6m that we are after,” Kimberley says.
“Another important part of it is the professional learning for teachers. What they don’t get taught in university. How to manage your classroom, how to deal with difficult kids, all those critical skills. So that’s what we’ve got a huge focus on in this new business.”
Twenty per cent of the new subscription company is being sold to external investors in the raising. Kimberley and his co-founder, Jan Owen, are retaining 40 per cent.
The Australian Education Union, which has 200,000 members, has recently agreed to purchase all of its first-year teachers a one-year subscription to Cool+. International growth is next on the horizon.
“We’ve looked at where we are going to be in five years. Our valuation post our cap raising will be $12.3m and if we hit our targets we will be looking at a valuation of around $112m,” Kimberley says.
“That also includes overseas expansion. We think it’s got absolute, massive potential with our connections overseas, using our existing networks in Australia.”
Adventure hunter
The launch of Cool Australia back in 2005 was inspired by Kimberley’s maiden trip to Antarctica when he hauled sleds across the snow and ice with Peter Hillary, son of famous English mountaineer Sir Edmund. They have been good friends for a decade.
“Antarctica is a place that changes you. It is this pristine wilderness and it can go from that to something horrific in a matter of minutes,” Kimberley says.
He has also travelled extensively throughout Australia and the world, including trekking Denali – the highest mountain peak in North America – and a month-long kayaking odyssey on Prince William Sound, both in Alaska.
More recently, Kimberley has trekked to Mt Everest base camp, traversed the Kokoda Track, and been dogsledding with his father in the Yukon Territories in Canada.
He learned from two near-death experiences in 1992 when he sought to conquer South America’s highest peak, Mt Aconcagua, with another good friend, James Carnegie, the son of legendary businessman Sir Rod.
“There was a point where I was completely numb from the knees down and I couldn’t feel anything. I had this feeling of a metaphorical door closing in my mind, and I could feel it shutting behind me,” he recalls.
“I could see this sunny point ahead, which I thought was maybe half an hour away. It turned out it was about an hour and a half away. I thought if I can get to that sun, I’m fine.
“Eventually I got into the sun and I was alive. I didn’t know if I was going to lose my feet and toes. But I thought, ‘I’ve come this far, let’s keep going’.”
After reaching the peak and returning to their camp, the pair seconded an army helicopter that flew them off the mountain in a matter of minutes.
They then hitched a lift to Mendoza and jumped on the next flight to Buenos Aires.
“We thought we were geniuses until we hit a storm. The plane dived, quickly and steeply. Everyone was screaming and crying, James and I held hands as we plunged to a certain death. We eventually levelled off, landed erratically and kissed the ground on disembarking.”
He attributes his thrillseeking nature to his long-held belief, perhaps shaped by the experience with his brother, that life is short.
“If I can jam as many lifetimes into my lifetime as possible, that for me is the adventure,” Kimberley says.
“I love experiencing challenging scenarios. I love finding out what I’ve got in me and how I can help others with me, how we can all be better and stronger together, working as a team and being organised. I also just love the pristine beauty of being in nature. It is silent, clean and so far removed from our day to day lives.”
Saying goodbye to Just Jeans
Kimberley says he long lived with his father’s expectation that he would work at Just Jeans.
“I loved it. From the age of six I’d go with Dad on the school holidays to muck around in the warehouse. I just loved being around what was happening and stuff like the orders, the marketing, the ads. It was always a really dynamic place,” he says.
But eventually reality dawned on his father.
“Twenty years ago Dad said ‘It wasn’t until you were 30 that I realised you weren’t me’,” Kimberley says.
He left and rejoined the business four times, including working for Country Road for three years, before quitting for good – with his father’s blessing.
He stresses none of the family’s proceeds from the Just Group sale went to the next generation.
“I’m not saying I’ve missed out. I just didn’t get a financial windfall in any way,” he says.
“But I never had a sense of ownership or entitlement to the business. Mum and Dad are very generous people and I’ve obviously enjoyed some nice times with them on with trips and stuff. They’ve also supported me in a couple of businesses to a smallish extent.”
His greatest shared passion with his father is the Sydney Swans Football Club, of which Craig was president from 1975-77. For a period Just Jeans bankrolled the club. Craig was also an AFL commissioner from 1997-99.
Jason was so nervous during the 2005 Grand Final that he vomited in the carpark at half time. The Swans won their first AFL Premiership that day.
He also hosted a picnic on the hallowed SCG turf last year when he was one of thousands of spectators who invaded the field after Swans champion Lance “Buddy” Franklin booted his 1000th AFL goal.
“We’d grabbed a bottle of champagne and filled our pockets with beers and got a box of pies. We put a blanket in front of the Ladies’ stand. Dane Rampe was the Swans captain, who I was quite friendly with.
“I said to him ‘Ramps come over here, have a champagne, a beer or a pie. He said I can’t have a champers but I wouldn’t mind the pie. He quickly devoured one before the ground was eventually cleared and the game resumed.”
Father figure
Kimberley says he has long admired his father for his “endless passion and enthusiasm for everything”.
“He’s going harder at 82 than anyone I know. He is off the charts,” he says, before adding that he believes he has taught his father “that there’s more grey in the world than he imagined”.
“He’s quite black and white in his thinking and I think I’ve introduced him to other ways of looking at things and considering other opinions. I’ve made him less stronger in his ideologies and more accepting of other ways of seeing and doing things,” he says.
Kimberley also saw his parents in their darkest days imaginable.
“It was pretty terrible,” he says of the seven years his brother was alive.
“But his life wasn’t a brilliant life for Marcus. It was difficult and challenging and it took up a lot of their time. It was quite emotional seeing this person before you who was really a large toddler. It was a very tough existence for him.”
He will never forget the day they buried Marcus. His parents go to the grave each year on his birthday and the anniversary of his death.
But Kimberley didn’t go there for 30 years after his brother’s passing.
“I have done a bit of work with psychologists – like half a dozen sessions – and not going to the grave was something that was discussed,” he says.
“But I felt I didn’t need to go. I don’t know if I was avoiding anything. Nothing was pulling me to that site to go and visit him.”
The turning point was the shock passing of his best friend, 23-year-old Michael Fox – the son of trucking magnate Lindsay Fox – who tragically took his own life in January 1991.
Kimberley still visits his best mate’s grave at the St Kilda Cemetery every couple of months. Now he also goes to the resting place of his late brother at least once a year.
“As I have got older and have my own kids, I now look back and think ‘f..k, no parent should have to bury a child’,” he says – the family’s pain still clear in his eyes.
“But we all learned a lot from Marcus and the experience of having him in our lives.”
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