Lessons in chemistry: Will Vicars, Jennifer Child and Sophie Holt on reviving Oroton together
The appointment of two very different women has so far proven one of the best moves for Will Vicars, with the trio revealing how they are reviving the fashion brand.
Jennifer Child and Sophie Holt are the corporate equivalent of chalk and cheese.
The former spent about 15 years working at global management consulting giant McKinsey & Company, where she was drilled in the science of strategy and spreadsheets, as well as the peculiar art of data dashboards.
The latter has spent 30 years designing for some of Australia’s best-known retail brands, including Country Road and Witchery.
This article appears in The List — Australia’s Richest 250, published March 15, where Vicars is ranked in the top 120.
Their paths crossed for the first time in late 2021, when billionaire Will Vicars – best known as chief investment officer of famed boutique firm Caledonia Investments – tapped Child to lead iconic Australian retailer Oroton, one of the nation’s oldest luxury brands.
Oroton began life in 1938 as a textile importing group, but made its name in the 1950s and 60s with gold and silver mesh compacts and bags, and later by securing the lucrative Polo Ralph Lauren franchise in Australia.
Vicars, who was a board member of Oroton when it was an ASX-listed company, bought the now 86-year-old leather goods and accessories retailer in 2017 for $25 million after it lost the Polo Ralph Lauren licence and plunged into voluntary administration.
Holt, now the brand’s head of design and creative director, will never forget the first time Child joined her team on a work trip to Paris in 2021. “Jenny came with us to look at all the stores and everything,” she says. “We would spend half a day in a department store and we would then go to a print archive and spend a day there. We touched every single garment and were very, very detailed. She thought we were quite mad.”
Child concurs. “I could not believe the attention to detail,” she says. “It could be a stitch that they thought was really interesting, or a fabrication or something that just really got their interest because it was new and innovative. You could see the absorption rate. It really was just like mad scientists at work.”
Then came Holt’s first experience with a management consultant’s dashboard: high-level overviews that combine an array of key performance indicators on a single page.
“We got this new dashboard once from Jenny,” Holt recalls. “She was like, ‘Okay, this is the leadership team. Every week, we are going to take turns and talk through the dashboard. I want you to go into all different parts of the business and then [the person whose] turn it is can analyse what they think they are taking from this dashboard.’
“I thought, ‘Oh my god.’ I’m not great at spreadsheets, I’m not great at the finances, so I used to be quite scared. But each week would happen and she wouldn’t pick me. By the time it was my turn, I think she realised that perhaps it wasn’t my thing.”
Vicars’ appointment of Holt in 2017 and then Child as her boss four years later has so far proven to be a masterstroke. In their first joint interview, Child, Holt and Vicars reveal the secret of their chemistry, which last financial year saw the retailer record double-digit sales growth for a second year – up 18 per cent to $114.5 million – and a doubling of operating profit to $7.4 million.
“The product was on its way, and we are now delivering it with the right people in the right roles,” says Vicars, whose wealth is valued at $1.24 billion on this year’s The List – Richest 250.
“At the top it has been the combination of Sophie’s creative skills and Jenny’s expertise in leadership and digital transformation that she brought from McKinsey. Seventy per cent of the senior team have changed over the past three years as we have repositioned the company for bigger ambitions.”
Holt has focused on reinvigorating the accessories side of the brand and introducing ready-to-wear apparel. She doesn’t mince words when she recalls the appointment of administrators shortly after her arrival.
“It was pretty ugly, it was pretty bad. It didn’t surprise me that it went into administration. But it is such an iconic, incredible brand with so much going for it. I think it just needed some direction from a brand point of view, and from a product and customer point of view.”
She says the first part of the turnaround era took place under former CEO David Kesby. The key has been giving the customer a cohesive message across all touch points – in the stores, online and in advertising. “So it is giving them this really beautiful story that hits on craftsmanship and heritage, but it is also modern and it is wearable. Jenny has really taken that and run with it. Now we have embarked on this power-charged next stage of the strategy.”
She says Vicars has become far more hands-on since the appointment of Child. Over the past year he has also added Baby Bunting chair and JB Hi-Fi director Melanie Wilson to the board. “He’s a lot more involved, and I think quite excited about the future,” Holt says.
With Holt living in Melbourne and Child in Sydney, Vicars made a special effort to bring them together socially, where, as Child puts it, they could “kick back and have a glass of wine together and discuss life”.
Vicars says the hands-on approach was driven by his intrigue at the opportunity of bringing the disparate skills of Holt and Child together. “With a new CEO coming in, it was important for me to be closer to the business, and my key focus was marrying the different skill bases of Sophie and Jenny,” he says. “We now all have the same North Star.”
The American Midwest, the spiritual birthplace of Friday night college football, was home to Jennifer Child until her high school years, when she moved south to the US country music capital, Nashville.
After leaving school and securing an MBA from Duke University, she started as an associate at McKinsey’s office in Atlanta.
In 2015 she had the opportunity to follow a Houston-based client when they took a role in Melbourne. Feeling, as she puts it, “fancy free” without a husband or children, she moved across the world to McKinsey’s Sydney office.
She says her years with the consulting giant earned her traits that have translated well to Oroton, with resilience the most important. “Coming into an industry that I hadn’t seen this up close and personal before, it was about having the resilience to really take the hard crack at what our strategy needed to be and how to push the business forward.”
The tools taught at McKinsey have also given her the confidence to attack any problem without fear. “You could say Oroton is fashion, it is not that complicated. But there certainly are complexities in the way our business works. We’ve got multiple seasons that we are designing for at any given time, we’ve got international supplier relationships, or we’re managing currency exchange. There are layers to it. I haven’t really been afraid of learning anything or being able to crack any of the problems we are facing.”
She believes McKinsey made her a risk taker, inspiring her to move to a whole new geography to build a new client base almost from scratch for seven years before taking the Oroton role. “That characteristic has really helped me at Oroton as well, as we think about new ventures of growth and how we want to expand the business – what it is known for today and what it could be known for in the future.”
While McKinsey taught Child the path to finding the right answers in business, she says Holt has helped her ask the most important question in retail. “She has taught me to ask, ‘Does it look good to people, both internal and external?’ So we have now made it a better right answer.”
-
“I think he also trusts Soph and me, especially now. He’s got something to get excited about.” – Jennifer Child
-
Holt and Child are at different stages of their personal lives – the former has three adult children, while the latter has a seven-year-old son. “I think there’s some camaraderie there about how we operate as parents, even though Sophie’s experience with young kids was a few years ago, and mine is now,” Child says.
Child, whose husband works in the food industry, has firm life rules that she says allow her to prioritise. “There are some things I just don’t do. This is embarrassing, but I never touch laundry,” she says with a smile. “We have help with all that type of stuff around the house. I had a full-time nanny all the way through McKinsey, up until last year. That’s the one thing I’ve dialled back. We’ve got babysitters and some periodic support, and very active in-laws who live about 10 minutes away. Aside from that, I’ve spent my time on the quality stuff, like making sure I take my son to school in the morning so we can listen to an audiobook together in the car. I want to focus on the important things.”
Ask Child to name a trait she admires in Vicars, and she replies with a single word: passion. “Will is a passionate guy in general about the investments that he’s made through Caledonia. With Oroton being a personal investment, he brings a personal passion to it. I think he also trusts Soph and me, especially now. He’s got something to get excited about.”
Child, meanwhile, is also energised by Vicars’ big-picture vision. “He pushes me to think really big about the full potential of this brand and this business. To have that support, access to capital, and the freedom to really run with ideas is honestly the reason I’m here.”
Vicars has always been one to think outside the square in the investment world and he encourages his leadership team at Oroton to do the same. “Compared with the traditional industry growth rates of apparel and accessories retail, our opportunity with this iconic brand is much larger,” he says.
This thinking inspires Child to speak of the beauty of “putting the wind in people’s hair” about Oroton’s next era of growth. “It is that five-year story that had never been painted and put on paper. If you were to describe Oroton in 2027 and you were sitting at a table with an investor, how would you describe it in a way that put wind in their hair? Like, we are in the convertible, driving down the highway, all excited about where we are heading.”
The brand is now also focusing on sustainability after launching a partnership with resale platform AirRobe that allows Oroton customers to resell, rent or recycle pre-loved pieces. Oroton’s core sustainability mission includes using recycled and plant-based materials, supply chain transparency, and best practice processes.
Oroton stores have also been redesigned with homely touches and styling suites that offer customers more personalised services. Holt wants Oroton to grow further into offering products and services, especially in gifting.
“The service of curation – there is an art to that in the digital world,” she says. “It is about being able to own occasions in people’s lives, whether that’s going on a holiday, shopping for a gift, or getting ready for a formal event like a wedding. That is a huge part of our growth story.”
When Vicars purchased Oroton, he may have inspired other billionaires to follow his lead in buying up iconic Australian brands. Andrew and Nicola Forrest, now separated, own boot and clothing store RM Williams and hat company Akubra. And last December Gina Rinehart snapped up clothing and shoe brands Driza-Bone and Rossi Boots. All have put capital into Australian heritage brands that have stood the test of time.
Like his billionaire contemporaries, Vicars wants to honour Oroton’s past while charting its new future. “Our vision is marrying up the heritage, quality and history of this amazing brand with the demands of our traditional customers and those of the younger, modern consumer. We now see a whole host of opportunities for the brand, powered by our people, access to capital and exciting new products.”
