Young and hip buy into Outland Denim’s ethics

Outland Denim’s crowdsourced equity funding campaign has been backed predominantly by younger female investors.

James and Erica Bartle at their Outland Denim office in Tamborine Mountain, Queensland Picture: Luke Marsden

Principles matter — especially to younger female investors.

That’s one insight that can be drawn from the results of Outland Denim’s crowdsourced equity funding round, which ended on Wednesday night raising $1.32m.

It appears especially true that for the younger generation of ­investors, a focus on ethics, sustainability and positive social outcomes rank highly.

James Bartle founded the denim label in 2016, to offer at-risk women in Cambodia a way out of the cycle of poverty and human trafficking, via training and employment. It’s a story that has resonated with royalty — Meghan Markle wore their jeans on the Australian tour with Prince Harry in 2018 — as well as first-time millennial investors.

Bartle is “pretty amazed” at the response to the initiative, which became the fastest on the Birchal crowd-funding platform, raising almost $1m in less than a week.

While Bartle concedes the final figure was short of the $2m mark Outland had hoped for in this round, he had also been worried they might make only a few hundred thousand.

This newspaper first reported on the crowd-funding campaign at the beginning of March — before the COVID-19 lockdowns and its economic downturn took effect.

Despite advice to the contrary, Bartle forged ahead to open the round in April.

“I was nervous, but I just believed we could make it through,” he tells The Weekend Australian. “I’ve seen how supportive our community is. And I’m competitive. We felt that if you just keep telling the story, people will align with something that has a positive outcome, especially now.”

A total of 1000 investors took the opportunity, with interesting results.

Alan Crabbe, co-founder of Birchal, tells The Weekend Australian that 63 per cent of investors were women, and 42 per cent of investors were from Queensland, near the company’s base in Tamborine Mountain.

“The majority of investors were 40 and under, so very much the millennials, which is [the brand’s] target audience as well.

“It’s great to see younger ­people maybe investing for the first time. There was quite a group of 19 and 20-year-olds — more than the 21 to 24-year-olds — and it went right up to 80-year-olds.”

While there were some experienced investors putting in major amounts, 80 per cent of investments were of $1000 or less.

Crabbe believes the sustainability and ethics credentials of the brand were “the cream” to the investment, saying that the business is performing well, with the manufacturing operation in Cambodia now opening up its services to other brands.

The brand has a handful of key department stores accounts in Australia, the US and Canada, as well as its own e-commerce platform, which sells internationally.

“Also, the international expansion for a direct-to-consumer company, there are no borders. They’ve been able to launch in other markets, particularly in the UK and US, which opens up a huge opportunity for them to grow and sell to the world. That’s quite a compelling investment ­opportunity,” Crabbe says.

Having a large number of smaller investors is more valuable, in Bartle’s opinion, than a few large investors for a brand such as this. “We have 1000 people who have bought into our brand, who believe in the vision of where we want to go and how we want to achieve it,” Bartle says. “That’s a really large community on top of our EDM database — it’s like ­supercharging the business.”

Throughout the COVID-19-induced downturn, Bartle has kept on all staff of just over 100 in Cambodia, and is pleased that there are now no expats working in Cambodia. “Now all management is local — which is a massive feat for us,” he says. “That was always the ­ultimate goal.”