[00:00:00] Fiona Johnston
It's one thing to talk about this big brand, Cue, that's got $100 million of revenue and 51 stores and all of this press, but what does it mean for you as a small business owner? We need to tell people what we sell. We need to photograph our products and put them on the feed. We need to create ways of explaining what our services are and how to buy them.
Show the process. Talk to me about the decisions that you make. Bring me into your point of view. Show me.
Intro Money Secrets
Are you a small business owner who'd love to be making more money while making positive change in the world? You're in the right place, friend. Hi, I'm Fi Johnston, a chartered accountant and money coach obsessed with small business. In The Money Secrets Podcast, I share strategies that you can use to make more money without working harder. You'll hear successful small business owners share what they've learned about money and business, and I'll help you to [00:01:00] think differently and shift your perspectives about money so you can grow your business and your impact. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good business owners like you.
Acknowledgement of Country
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation, and I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work, and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been ceded. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Fi
This is what no one else is saying about Cue Clothing. I've sat back and read lots of commentary about Cue and Veronica Main going into voluntary administration. There's been lots of interesting thoughts about the relevance of the brand, the tough trading conditions, and the recent improvement in profitability. [00:02:00] Cue was losing money, and its owners needed to do something fast. 51 stores, hundreds of staff, a 60-year legacy. It's something worth protecting. But here's what no one else is saying.
What about the lack of size inclusivity or representation? So according to their website, Cue stocked sizes 6 to 16, but every photo in their marketing is of a size 6 or 8, or maybe a size 10 woman. They stock size 16 clothes, but didn't wanna photograph size 16 women wearing them. So why would a size 16 babe walk into one of their stores or shop on their website?
She can't even see what the garments look like on her body. And look, I don't think every brand needs extended sizing. It doesn't make sense for a lot of brands, especially when their clothing is really skewed towards a very young, thin audience. But if you're selling elevated workwear, [00:03:00] like Cue Clothing, for grown women, and only selling it to roughly half the female population, can you really maintain 51 stores in a country the size of Australia?
Adding a size 18 to the range would extend their market size by at least 10%. And photographing people wearing your products in all of your sizes is smart business. And stocking clothes that fit the women in the country you operate in seems like common sense to this chartered accountant. Size 16 and size 18 women and above have money to spend, and they want to see themselves represented in the brands they spend with.
So what am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that Cue Clothing and Veronica Maine recently went into voluntary administration. So Cue Clothing is named as an iconic Australian fashion brand, and it's [00:04:00] been in business for more than 60 years. Cue Clothing operates Cue and Veronica Maine, and it does seem that there's a little bit of uncertainty about what is going to be f- you know, the future of these brands.
And from what I can tell, the ABC reports that the company was founded in 1968, and that it has 69 stores across Australia when you include the concessions that it has in Myer and David Jones. It's currently in voluntary administration being managed by BDO, and it looks like they are looking for a buyer to take on, um, the business in its current form.
From what I can tell, it seems that the business was actually purchased by a venture capital firm around a year ago. It's not currently a sort of family-owned business as it was, you know, back in 1968. What I can see from news.com [00:05:00] is that, you know, there's, there's all sorts of commentary about why this has happened.
Professor Mortimer, who appears to be a retail marketing expert, his opinion is that some of the inhibiting factors squeezing all Australian retailers, including tighter household budgets, increasing business costs, and ultra budget stores like Shein and Temu, as well as fast fashion stores like Zara, H&M, and Uniqlo.
Professor Mortimer, I think it's a little bit of a stretch to look to Shein and Temu as being part of this kind of difficulty that Cue is having selling its products. When we look at what Cue looked like before the pandemic, they had 230 stores, and they had revenue around 180 million, so a very significant fashion brand.
Last financial year, sales were down [00:06:00] to 103 million, which was actually an increase on the year before, and its losses for the last financial year, so 2026, were $5 million. Which is a big amount of money to lose, it's around 5% of their revenue, but it was actually an improvement on the previous year, where I believe they lost 10 or 15 million in that year.
So it has clearly been changing a lot since the COVID-19 pandemic, and I think because the clothes that they sell tend to be really focused on that sort of elevated work wear, there's been a huge societal shift in terms of how many of us are wearing work wear and how often we're wearing it. So, so many people are now working from home, or they might be hybrid-working between home and the office.
And so there probably is overall less [00:07:00] demand for Cue's products than there were before the COVID-19 pandemic. I think we can all agree that there has been a huge societal shift in that time. But this issue of sizing is something that I'm really interested in unpacking further. So on the Cue website, every single woman that I see looks like she's under 25 years old, and there's a very particular body type, uh, that is represented in their photos.
Side note, is there a reason why all models have to look unhappy in their photos? Like, is there a rule? Is there a rule that says models are not allowed to look happy when they're being photographed in beautiful clothes? I really don't understand this sort of sullen look that so many models have, and I'm, I'm sure it has nothing to do with the model and everything to do with the photographer.
But if somebody knows the answer to that, perhaps you could let me know. [00:08:00] But essentially, when you look at the website of Cue, when you look at the social media profile for Cue, you see a very similar body type, and she is thin, and she is tall, and she is young But actually, the clothes come in a range of sizes.
They go up to a size 16, and yet there is not one photo that I can find of a woman who is even remotely close to a size 16. Why is this? Why have we accepted that fashion brands show us photos of only the smallest size of the garment that they are selling? This happens in almost every fashion brand, and nobody ever talks about it.
It's like, why have we accepted that we are only going to see the smallest size that the brand sells? This happens across lots of different types of brands. I [00:09:00] actually see this in plus-size brands as well. I am a plus-size shopper. I've never bought anything from Cue. I'm not in their size range, and I'm also not their demographic because I've never been a kind of elevated workwear kinda gal.
But even plus-size brands do this. A lot of their garments are only shown on the smallest body size that they sell clothes for. So what Cue is doing here is it's presenting itself as a brand that is really only available for this very particular body type and shape. And as a business, that is their prerogative.
You are allowed to choose as a business how you choose to do things. You can be stocking size 6 to 10 and, and that's absolutely fine. There's no issue with that. But why would you be selling sizes 6 to 16 and not actively trying to sell all of those sizes? I've had [00:10:00] a a few disagreements with people on LinkedIn and Instagram this week as I have been, you know, sharing my thoughts about why Cue might be in difficulty, and I think part of it is that the average-sized woman in Australia is a size 16 to 18.
It's actually really difficult to get that data, uh, which is why I'm being a little cagey about whether it's a 16 or an 18. My research tells me that it's actually an 18 is the s- most common sized woman in Australia, but let's, you know, assume that it's a 16 to an 18. So what that means is that the average woman is right at the top of the Cue size range, or she's actually just falling out of it.
So I call that half the population. So Cue is trying to sell elevated workwear to less than half of the female population. And not only are they selling elevated workwear, they're selling [00:11:00] expensive elevated workwear, which begs the question, who in this demographic of people under the age of 25 has the budget for garments between the $200 and $400?
I know when I was in my early 20s, I was not spending that kind of money or the equivalent of that kind of money on workwear, and I'm really curious to understand who it is that's actually buying these garments. Clearly, Cue still has a very significant business. They still turn over $100 million, and they were almost profitable last financial year with a loss of a relatively small $5 million.
So clearly they are selling these garments, and they are almost at profitability But why have we accepted that we only show the smallest size of clothing in our marketing? When I posted this to LinkedIn, I had a lot of people [00:12:00] sharing with me that they had been really big shoppers of Cue when they were younger, and they, they loved wearing Cue suits, but once they had their babies, they no longer fit into Cue clothing and therefore were unable to buy suits and other beautiful work wear from Cue.
So there's been this real gap in understanding how these, you know, consumers who want to continue to buy from Cue, and a legacy brand like that should have the ability to move and pivot with society. 60 years is a very long time to notice the trends of different body sizes in the world. Whether you like it or not, whether you're happy with it or not, bodies are getting bigger, and they have been for many decades.
So it's not like Cue hasn't had time to notice, hey, more of the population seems to be getting bigger, but yet they have done nothing about either stocking those sizes or [00:13:00] trying to actively sell those sizes. A lot of women have also commented on my LinkedIn and Instagram posts about the fact that they have had terrible treatment in Cue stores, where they've gone in and been told to, you know, leave because there's no way anything here is going to fit them.
I've also heard a lot of women talking about the fact that the larger sizes at Cue might be a larger size, but they don't actually work on that size body. And the truth is that size grading, which is going up and down in clothing, is really hard. You don't just add 10% to all of the measurements to move up a size.
Bodies are different in different sizes, and really professional and experienced tailors and clothes designers know this. Surely Cue has the expertise to know how to grade the same dress for a size 6 and a size 16 person. But apparently, that is [00:14:00] not the experience that people are having in store. I also had somebody comment on my post on LinkedIn.
It was a man. I think it's the only man who commented on my LinkedIn post, and his profile says that he is a retail leader, which I find interesting, because his comments were something along the lines of, "Stop whinging about there not being photos of all of the sizes and just go into the store and try them on."
So it's a little alarming to me that that's what a retail leader thinks they should be saying to consumers.
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My name's Rich. I'm from Mount Zero Olives. So Fi started working with us to help break down a family dynamic. So she actually came in as a proxy for my mother. My mother and father have since retired, but, uh, Fi has stayed, uh, on board and is a huge asset to the business. Probably the biggest impact was in the early days of COVID, and obviously when restaurants shuttered, Fi was there with that steady influence, doing the numbers and going, [00:15:00] "Hey, you guys are okay. Gonna make some changes, but we're gonna get through this." And having someone to endorse that and help us guide through was incredible. Fi's not a, um, not just a numbers person. She's an amazing copywriter. She's got an amazing energy, amazing positivity, and has probably greater skills in marketing, or to equal her, her numbers skills as well, and that combination I think is really rare and a real asset to Fi and anyone who works with her. Uh, Fi is the full package in terms of support from a financial perspective, a marketing perspective, and really being able to give you sense check, both, uh, from business perspective, but back it up from a financial perspective.
Fi
So let's imagine that a, a retailer has three different hats. So one hat that comes in three colors, but they only take a photo of it in one color, and they tell you that there's two other colors, but you can't see what they look like.
So the only way to see what the hat looks like is to go into the store, but you don't know [00:16:00] that it even exists, so therefore you don't go into the store looking for it. So that is what Cue and so many other brands are doing by not taking photos of the different sizes that exist in their range. So to that retail leader who commented on my LinkedIn post, might be a very interesting thing for you to consider whether your own retail store that you're working in or working for is actually doing itself a disservice by not showing photos of, you know, the garments that exist in, in that brand in multiple sizes.
I also had a lot of women on my Instagram post telling me that they actually had no idea that Cue went up to a size 16, and that they actually are in that size bracket. So a lot of the women commenting on my post were saying, "Hey, I'm a size 12. I'm a size 14. I'm a size 16. I had no [00:17:00] idea that I could buy something from Cue."
And these women would look absolutely banging in some of the suits that I've seen on the feed of Cue. Isn't that wild to think that professional women who are in their 30s and 40s who are absolutely gorgeous and would look gorgeous in a Cue suit, and they have the budget for a Cue suit, they don't even know that there is a suit for them at Cue?
I mean, this is just absolute madness to me. Somebody else was commenting on my LinkedIn post, the very clever Erin from Young Folks Agency, who is an amazing marketer, was saying... Actually, I'll read her comment out. She says, "Yes, seeing the clothes on a body- is a huge CRO advantage, which means actually getting people to convert to being a customer.
Yes, it adds to the dollar, dollars to the shoot budget, but it's such a good investment. It's also something that can easily [00:18:00] be factored into creator budgets and the social-first content that creators are paid to produce is integrated into the website. So she, as a marketing expert, is explaining that having photos of all of the things that you sell, including a range of different bodies for a particular garment, is really good for conversion rates.
What I've said is, you know, it is definitely great for businesses to take a range of photos, but honestly, so many fashion brands are afraid of bigger bodies, so they pretend that we don't exist even when they sell that size. And also, if these companies don't have a budget to create more photos from their garments, ask your customers to create user-generated content.
Like, what an incredible opportunity to say, "Hey, our, you know, size 14 and 16 customers, [00:19:00] we wanna see what our garments look like on your bodies. Let's flood the feed with that and show people how great our clothes look like on your bodies." But another question that I had that really popped up when the lovely Erin was talking to me about this was, why do we assume that the photos of...
should always be of the smallest size? And if there will be photos of larger sizes, that's deemed to be the extra cost, right? Like, why do we have this idea in our mind that shooting a photo of a larger size is increasing the cost of, you know, marketing that product? It's assuming that taking the photo of the smaller product, you know, that's the default.
But why? Why is that the default? Why don't we take the default photo as the size that is in the middle of the range? Why does it have to be at the bottom of the range in terms of [00:20:00] size? And you know, Cue is $100 million turnover business, so I'm pretty sure they could have found the budget for some extra photos.
They don't even have to provide photos of every single garment or, or line or SKU. Just provide some photos of larger bodies in your marketing so that women who are that size body know, "Oh, wow, look at that beautiful suit on that beautiful woman who looks a little bit like me. I'm gonna jump on the Cue website and find out what is available because I want that garment, and I've got the money to buy that garment."
So, it's a really interesting topic when you've got big retail commentators and professors and all of these journalists talking about the fact that, you know, their thoughts are that the increasing cost of doing business, [00:21:00] the tightening of the economy and the changing, you know, societal expectations around whether we're wearing workwear or not, and the competition of companies like Shein and Temu are part of the reason why Cue is in trouble.
And I just cannot... I just can't get my head around that. Shein and Temu are not competing against Cue. Shein and Temu are absolute s- the scourge of the earth. Fast fashion is a whole other topic, but to think that Cue Clothing is competing against such a cheap and nasty brand, I just don't think that that stacks up Something else that I just can't let go of that I keep trying to dig into understanding Cue's business model, how they do things, you know, how they represent themselves, and I'm trying to understand as a business strategist what they see as their unique [00:22:00] value proposition.
So when you go to their website, the visuals tell me that their target market is a young, thin woman. Great. So that is who you are showing me is your target market, and perhaps that's not correct, but that's what you are visually showing me. So then I'm going looking for other unique value propositions that help Cue to be positioned in the way that they want to be.
Now, as I said before, the pieces are, in some people's words, expensive. I had a lot of people on LinkedIn telling me that they just do not have three or $400 for a garment, and especially a garment that needs to be hand washed or dry cleaned. And look, I get it, but in my mind, a three or $400 garment that lasts you for years and is extremely high quality, and it's the sort of garment that you probably only wear to really special occasions, [00:23:00] I'm not offended by that amount.
I don't actually think that that is a large amount of money to spend on a premium garment. But apparently, a lot of people are looking at it and saying, "Well, I don't see the quality there. I don't see that it's the right fit for me because I'm only seeing it on these thin bodies, and that's not what my body looks like, and I'm not convinced that the price matches the value for me."
So I'm trying to dig in, and some photos that I've seen from Cue say things... I, I saw a photo of a store, a retail store, that looked like it was in a shopping center, and it said, "Still manufacturing in Australia And I'm, I'm really twisted around by this sentence, "Still manufacturing in Australia." Why are we saying still manufacturing in Australia like we're stuck like a ball and chain to this [00:24:00] idea of manufacturing in Australia?
Why aren't we saying proudly manufacturing in Australia? This business was started in 1968, and my understanding is that the family who started it was really inspired by that sort of mod '60s fashion that was coming from the UK, and they wanted to, you know, recreate those beautiful shapes through fashion.
And so from what I can tell, the brand is made in Australia, but my gosh, they are making it hard to understand if they are or not. So this is what the About Us page or Our Story page says on the Cue website. I'm just gonna read it verbatim. "About us. Every time a new design comes to life in our Sydney studio, it's an expression of the elements that make us Cue.
The silhouettes, the signature details, the bespoke prints. Since 1968, we've made sharp, well-tailored [00:25:00] clothing that speaks volumes whenever you need to make a statement. That's why everything we design is produced in considered quantities, focusing on lasting pieces created from premium fabrics, the pieces that evolve into the undeniable expression of you."
Um, what? I don't know about you, but to me that feels like such a word salad. Are you making in Australia or aren't you? It says, "Each time a new design comes to life in our Sydney studio, it's an expression of the elements that make us Cue." So does that mean that you're designing in Australia or manufacturing in Australia?
Because it's very unclear. The prices of your garments indicate that you are making in Australia, but is this kind of greenwashing or whatever the equivalent is? Like, if this business is still making its [00:26:00] garments in Australia, that is a huge value proposition. And if so, why are they not shouting about it from the rooftops?
Why is it not the first thing that appears on their Instagram profile? Like, their Instagram profile says, "Meet the new Cue. Explore the new pieces shaping the season." Boring. What? I d- I just, I don't even care about those two sentences. Like, where is the passion? Where is the expression of the elements that make us Cue?
What are these pieces that evolve into the undeniable expression of you? If this business is making in Australia, that is phenomenal to have a fashion business that has been manufacturing in Australia for 60 years. And maybe I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it is really hard to find out whether or not this business is making in [00:27:00] Australia or not There's also been a term that's been included in my LinkedIn comments.
Somebody talked about this thing called size washing. Now, it could mean a couple of different things. I think one version of size washing is where Cue says that they have a range of size 6 to 16, but the 16 is really a 14. That seems to be a pretty common experience from the comments I've had on, um, the posts that I've made this week.
And there's also another way of interpreting size washing, which is that maybe they list size 16 on their website, but do they actually sell that size? I've had the experience with another brand called Boody, which I really love the idea of, and I went onto their website multiple times trying to find the garments that they sell in my size.
They said that they sold them in my size. On all of the ads that I saw on [00:28:00] Instagram, the way they discussed their brand was that they come in size this to this. But every time I went to the website, my size just wasn't available, and I mean multiple times over a month or two, and I have now given up and decided I won't, I don't wanna give them my money.
And to me, it felt that... It felt like they were size washing, or whatever we wanna call it. So they wanna say that they're being inclusive, but they're actually not interested in providing plus size clothes. So I want to bring this conversation back together and talk about- A couple of things to do with having inclusive sizing or extended sizing.
A couple of my clients are fashion brands, and I know probably more than the average person about what it is like to have a business that has inclusive sizes. Short story, it's really bloody hard. When [00:29:00] you stock a wider range of sizes than other stores, you basically have more costs and more pressure on you to market because you've gotta sell 10 sizes instead of five.
So there is a lot of difficulty in having a business that has, you know, sizes 6 to 26. It's no easy feat, and I'm not for one second trying to assert that Cue Clothing or Veronica Main should be extending its r- size range significantly. The other thing I know from the clients I've worked with is that size grading is really hard.
So going from a size 10 to a size 12, maybe it is just adding 10% to all of the measurements. But going to a size 16, 18, 20, and et cetera, it's not a direct translation. It's not 10% [00:30:00] to all of the measurements done. That's not how our bodies work. So grading sizes is something that plus-size designers really have to work on, like trying to understand how to make different garments look good on different size bodies.
There's an art to it. There's a science to it But I just keep thinking about the fact that if Cue Clothing is designing and manufacturing in Australia, they would have expertise that knows how to grade sizes. So if what a lot of my following have been telling me, which is that the clothes in the size 14 and 16 just do not look right on their bodies, even if they've realized that they sell them and they've gone into the store to try them on.
So it begs the question, are these designers and tailors actually trying their garments on women of different sizes? Or are they just sticking with the standard s- you know, sample size, [00:31:00] which I believe is a size 10, but maybe it's a different size now. Are they just trying their garment on a size 10 woman and then just scaling up and down from there?
Or are they actually trying their garments on people with actual bodies that are the size that they're trying to sell? The mind boggles because I would've thought a company with $100 million of revenue and many, many staff and a 60-year legacy would actually have a lot of, you know, credibility and a lot of skills around size grading and designing and manufacturing beautiful clothes for a variety of body sizes.
But who knows? So here's what I would do if I was working on the business strategy for Cue Clothing. I haven't really delved much into Veronica Maine. I've focused my sort of Googling on Cue. So if anybody knows more about Veronica [00:32:00] Maine, please feel free to let me know if I've missed anything amazing with that brand But if I was working with Cue Clothing on their business and finance strategy, these are some of the things that I would do.
What I would do is I would wanna understand who are their customers? Who is this woman that they think that they are selling to? I'd wanna understand everything about who this person is, how many of those customers exist in their, you know, database, their, you know, however they track their customers. And I'd wanna understand how many Australian women don't actually realize that they come in a range of sizes.
So I think they need to do some really good research. It doesn't even need to be complicated. They could have content creators going out into the streets wearing Cue clothing and talk to people and say, "Hey, when was the last time you bought something from Cue?" Like, it doesn't have to be rocket science.
It [00:33:00] doesn't have to be a scientific research experiment. But how do we find out from the Australian public how many women out there don't realize that Cue comes in their sizes? The next thing that I would wanna do is I would want to start taking photos of women in different body sizes wearing Cue clothes.
I would want to celebrate the women that are wearing their clothes, and I think this could be such an amazing user-generated content campaign where Cue puts the word out to its people, its customers of new and old. I mean, how amazing would it be... One of my LinkedIn comments said that their first Cue suit was bought 22 years ago, and they still wear it, and it's still amazing.
Like, is that not some of the best marketing ever? I wanna see a photo of that woman in her suit that's 22 years old and still looking fine. [00:34:00] I wanna see that on their Instagram feed. I wanna see photos of women of different heights and ages and sizes wearing Cue clothes. I want them to be celebrated And I just know that if that is what they were to do, they would have women of different body sizes going into their stores and going onto their website looking for garments.
The next thing that I would wanna do is really unpack this idea of are we making in Australia or are we not? Why are we being so elusive about it? And if it is true that they are making in Australia, I would want to make making in Australia part of their, you know, core message. And beyond just saying that it's made in Australia, I wanna show you that it's made in Australia.
I would want to see content of the garments being designed. I wanna [00:35:00] see them being tested on bodies. I wanna see them being manufactured in Australia. I wanna see the faces of the people making these beautiful clothes. I wanna hear from the designers about the, the choices they're making about the different tailoring, the cuts, the fabric.
I wanna hear about how they're deciding on different colorways in different, you know, ranges. And forgive me if this is what they are doing in their emails perhaps, but they are certainly not doing it on their website or on their Instagram. Can't you just imagine this content being so rich and interesting, showing manufacturing in Australia, something that we need to protect and something that people are willing to invest in?
If you know that your garment is being made in Australia, and it is high-quality fabric and it is a high-quality cut and design, you will pay [00:36:00] what that product is worth, and you will proudly walk around in your office or while you're doing a keynote or whenever el- whenever else women and men, I'm sure there would be a lot of men that would look hot as hell in Cue clothing, and non-binary people.
Like, some of their garments are absolutely beautiful But wouldn't it be amazing to feel so proud to wear a garment that was made in Australia by a brand that's been here since 1968? Like, I just see this as such a missed opportunity to actually celebrate the legacy, the history of this brand, and the fact that it's made in Australia.
And if it's not made in Australia, you really need to tighten up your messaging because if you are not making in Australia, you are being borderline, mm, I don't know, a little, uh, [00:37:00] deceitful. So another thing that I would obviously do if I was working with them on their business and finance strategy, I'd wanna understand where is that $105 million going?
Are there different stores that are less profitable than others? Is the website actually performing? Because it is not a user-friendly interface. There are some simple wins that they could be doing, like showing what sizes are actually available on the preview rather than having to click into each product There are many things they could do to improve the conversion rates on their website through better user experience.
So I would wanna be bringing in an expert to look at that, and I'd wanna be looking at all of the different stores, which of our stores are the most profitable and why. And do we need to reduce our footprint from 51 stores down to a smaller amount of stores? But can we have a flagship store? [00:38:00] Maybe the answer is to go from 51 stores down to 40 stores and have one really amazing headquarters flagship amazing store where you can actually see some of the behind-the-scenes manufacturing and making.
Imagine how beautiful that would be. It's highly unlikely that I will ever be doing any consulting for Cue Clothing, but it... that's what I'd do if I was. I would be looking at what is the unique value proposition here? Who is the target market, and is that who is actually buying? I'd wanna look at the profitability of each of the stores.
I'd wanna look at are they losing money because there are certain garments that are just not selling through, but others are? What are we getting wrong in terms of getting the right pieces that people want to buy? And, you know, the first thing I'd be saying is, "This brand is 60 years old, but it has not adapted to the bodies that exist [00:39:00] in the country that it sells to."
So I hope this has been an interesting conversation around what I think Cue could improve, you know, if they had the same kind of ideas as me. But what does this mean for you as a small business owner? 'Cause it's one thing to talk about this big brand Cue that's got $100 million of revenue and 51 stores and all of this, you know, press, but what does it mean for you as a small business owner?
I think something really interesting that we can take from this is that we need to tell people what we sell We need to photograph our products and put them on the feed. We need to create ways of explaining what our services are and how to buy them. It's business 101. I see so many people's Instagram feeds full of amazing brand awareness style [00:40:00] content, which is awesome, but we also need to every now and then tell people, "This is how to give me money.
This is how to purchase from me. This is how to work with me." I think another thing that we can learn from Q is that if the process of creating your product or service is really interesting and awesome, show me. Show it to me. Show me how the sausage is made. Show the process. Give me screenshots of your Zoom sessions when you were deciding on this or that.
Talk to me about your proprietary process if you are a service provider. If you are creating products, show me how they're made. Talk to me about the decisions that you make along the way of developing them. Bring me into your point of view as a service provider or a product provider. Let me feel like I [00:41:00] understand what it is that you do that's different from others, because showing me your process is a huge part of that Another thing that we can learn from Cue is we really need to understand who our target market is, and is there enough demand for our product or service from that target market?
Because a lot of us have an idea about who the client that we want to work with is, and we get really excited and passionate about what... You know, trying to find those people. But we also need to work out, is there actually enough demand for this product within that target market? So in Cue's example, if their target market is, you know, women between the ages of 20 and 25 who are a size 6 to 10, is there enough demand for the product that they sell in that demographic [00:42:00] to build a business with more than $100 million worth of revenue in a country as small as Australia?
I don't think so. So is there enough demand for your product or service with the target market that you are going after? And if you are a business that really values your customers, show them in your marketing. Like, tell us who your clients are. Show your clients wearing your products in your Instagram feed.
Talk about your clients on your podcast, like I'm doing now. You know, make your customers the hero of your brand and your marketing. And I think that's something that Cue has really not done, and I really hope that they do in the future. I think it'd be great to be able to have a business like that be able to remain in Australia.
If they are manufacturing here, then I am definitely a fan of that, and I think [00:43:00] there's tweaks that they could make. If you are somebody who's looking for a brand that stocks your size, I'm gonna tell you about two brands that I work with that are awesome. The first brand I wanna talk to you about is Made Five Ninety.
They have existed for more than 20 years. They make everything in Australia, in Sydney. They stock sizes 6 to 26. They have put an unbelievable amount of effort into grading their sizes so that the garments that are being sold on a size 26 body actually look good on a size 26 body, and that that same garment that has been graded for a size 6 body also looks great on that size 6 body Made Five Ninety, almost all of my clothes come from that brand.
They are such incredible quality. They last for years. I get [00:44:00] compliments on Made Five Ninety garments that I've had for five years or more all the time. And I love investing in Australian-made, Australian-owned fashion, and I love supporting a business. Shout out to Chris and the team at Made Five Ninety, you are amazing.
That has actually seen that women of multiple sizes wanna buy beautiful clothes. And to be completely honest, when I found Made Five Ninety five or six years ago, my fashion, my world, my personality changed. I really, really mean that. As a plus-size woman who is very much in the, on the plus side end, it was so difficult for me to find clothes that I felt good in.
So finding Made Five Ninety made me feel like I had a personality again. You can't underestimate the power of a great outfit [00:45:00] So Made Five Ninety, absolutely adore. I also wanna tell you about another incredible brand called Oh Ramona. So Oh Ramona was founded by Cara three years ago, and it started with this idea of why can't women who are different sizes go shopping together?
And she has created this incredible business, this incredible brand and community around her in just three years. She has an in-person store in Hawthorne in Melbourne that stocks from size six to 26 and beyond. She stocks brands from the US that I've never seen before, and they are awesome, absolutely beautiful.
Because Cara lived in the States for about 10 years, she actually has a lot of contacts and connections in different fashion worlds there. And what [00:46:00] she realized when she lived in America is that their inclusive clothing is just so much broader. There's so much more choice than there is here. So she brings amazing small batch, ethically created US brands here, and she also stocks some incredible Australian brands.
She doesn't stock a huge amount of brands because she's really particular about curating a really amazing experience in store. So again, she stocks from a size six to 26. She has a real life store that you can go into and try the garments on and see how they feel, and have the shop people help you understand, "Ooh," you know, "here's a brand that you might like to try."
We need to support these kind of businesses. So Made Five Ninety is in Sydney, Oh Ramona is in Melbourne. They are both actual shops, like actual shops that you can go and visit, and they are both beautiful. [00:47:00] They also both have amazing websites so you can purchase online. So that's two brands that are doing what Cue isn't Which is creating and selling and making available beautiful clothes from a size 6 to a 26 that you can feel super proud of and excited about wearing.
So I hope that gives you a couple of new brands to go and check out regardless of your gender. Amazing clothes. I hope this ep- episode has been interesting. I have been feeling a little ranty about this Cue topic, and when I posted about it on LinkedIn, it went absolutely bananas. I've never been particularly prolific on LinkedIn, so this was quite a surprise.
And when I posted about it on Instagram, it kind of went off too. So it's clearly hit a nerve with people who are seeing we're just getting frustrated with these brands that can't seem to keep up with what [00:48:00] Australians look like, and beyon- beneath all of this is fatphobia. Fashion brands are terrified and disgusted by fat bodies, so they pretend that we don't exist.
But whether these fashion brands like it or not, we exist, and we need to put clothes on our body. Unless you want us all walking around naked, we need clothes to put on our bodies, and we have money to spend. So Cue, I hope for some reason you end up listening to this episode. Everybody else, I would love to hear your thoughts.
Please reach out to me. Um, you can send a DM to the Money Secrets podcast Instagram account. You can get my contact details in the show notes. There's a form on our website that you can submit a question or just a thought about the podcast. If you have another small business owner in your life that you think will enjoy this, you know, [00:49:00] discussion about Cue Clothing and what we can learn from them, please share it with them.
I would love to get into their ears and hopefully help them to make more money and impact from their business. I'll see you again next week
Outro Money Secrets
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners. If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you'd subscribe to the podcast, but leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends.
I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective, and I really hope you enjoyed the listening experience
