So long Howey
Thanks to everyone who visited us at our Howey Place Holiday Shop in Melbourne during the past few months. We loved meeting you, talking your ears off about our passions, our pieces, our processes, our pipe dreams and our plans. And it was equally helpful and gratifying to get your immediate feedback.
As a budding, independently-funded design label, we believe we’re nailing the first phase of our business plan, which is to create a rolling collection of exceptional products that are designed and developed to work with existing KERRIN pieces, all available online at Kerrin.co with transient physical shopping experiences popping up every now and then.
Kerrin Flannel Shirts in Olive.
We keep the retail prices for our premium range as accessible as possible: no added margins to anticipate later markdowns and, by selling directly to our customers via our online store or at our pop-up shops, we have been able to avoid any middle-men mark-ups.
Our previous pop-up locations have included the gallery at South Melbourne’s Canon Experience Store; a fabulous trunk show at Smith Street in Collingwood; a retail collaboration with Modern Classic Shop in Fitzroy; a “shop-in-a-shop” at Prahran’s luxury menswear boutique Robinson Man; and a curated collective resort outfitters in Albert Park. Then the pandemic hit Australian shores and what ensued were some of the most isolating and alien-like experiences we never could have imagined until they were upon us.
Our Howey Place Holiday Shop in Melbourne’s CBD came about thanks to The City of Melbourne’s Shopfront Activation Program, which sought to fill empty shopfronts with brands such as KERRIN, with the objective of bringing energy and life back to the city following a tough period of lockdowns during the Covid years.
Participating in the Shopfront Activation Program was such a positive experience for us and, we believe, a truly win-win arrangement. Our label received great exposure to both locals and tourists and we were pleased to play a small part in bringing creative, curative energy back to our home city to help in its recalibration. The toll on Melbourne of all those lockdowns is still visible. Inroads are being made to get the city pumping, but that journey is long. And people are visiting Melbourne’s CBD with different objectives and in different ways and at different times than they did pre-pandemic. Having a retail shop during this time gave us a fascinating insight into those shifting sands of behaviour.
Canvas Bucket Hat.
Holiday Shirts hanging by.
Now that we’ve had that golden opportunity to “read the room”, we can take everything we’ve learned into our next round of design and product development. We’ll get our heads stuck into internal reports, and we’ll trip the tango with numbers on spreadsheets. But truth be told, we really just want to keep creating awesome pieces that fit in with life well-lived - clothes that wear easily and let us do all the things we love doing in the places we like to hang out at and the destinations we like to travel to.
We’re feeling pretty gratified to loll in that sweet spot where passion, purpose and vocation intersect.
Explore: The Windbreaker (coming soon)
Read article: Kerrin.co Holiday Shop
Until next time Melbourne.
