Fashion Designer

Fashion designer Catherine Maple-Brown is distracted by her eight-month-old daughter rolling around on the floor cooing at her.

“She’s so advanced,” Catherine jokes as she sweeps Isabel-Mary up onto one knee and adjusts her stripy pants.

Only 20 minutes ago the maplebrown designer was feeling “frazzled”.

Running late for the interview, she raced home to be greeted at the front door by a small crowd of people – her bookkeeper, the nanny, a hungry baby and me.

Despite the ease with which she juggled us into place, Catherine admitted it was tough being a mum, a full-time businesswoman and a fashion designer

“I find working from home quite a challenge. I’m not very good at just shutting the door,” she said.

Catherine launched the label following her graduate show at Australian Fashion Week in 2005.

“I was one of a couple of [fashion] graduates from East Sydney TAFE picked to showcase their collections,” she said.

Securing a sales agent proved to be a savvy move as buyers liked Catherine’s clothes, but the ambitious young designer soon realised running her own label was much harder than anticipated.

“Looking back now there were just so many mistakes, like pricing garments,” she cringes, recalling a dress she priced for less than it cost her to make.

“I was losing money at a wild rate, and when I launched the second range I only sold it to one shop, ironically that was in New York!”

Catherine realised, if she was going to maplebrown a success she needed to get serious and write a business plan.

She took on three financial partners; Roland, a Hong Kong rag trader, her husband, Tom, and her mother. “Our strategy with the label was to concentrate on one thing and do it really well,” she said.

“We decided maplebrown clothes were to be made out of different yarns. It was to be our point of difference.”

Months of hard work paid off and Catherine’s third collection proved to be a great success hitting well-known boutiques like The Corner Shop.

In hindsight, Catherine knows her label nearly failed because she ran her business “willy-nilly” and needed the structure and financial backing in place from day one.

“Starting any business is hard but it’s also expensive. In fashion you invest a lot of money into producing the clothes, but when stores don’t pay you for 60 to 90 days it’s easy to go broke.”

She admits that passion for her work had got her through the really tough times.

“I could not do this if I didn’t love it – it’s like my second baby.”