For the last decade, Kate Berry has been the company director and managing director of Huffer, a unisex brand with 15 stores across New Zealand and Melbourne. Her journey into the fashion and retail industry began after working in FMCG for 14 years.
She joined Huffer at a time when the business needed extra support, helping the company to create a strategic plan for growth. Although Berry found her role tough initially as she lacked industry experience, she was able to gain a wealth of industry knowledge by learning from the bottom up through unpacking boxes, attending product development meetings, touching garments and listening to experienced professionals.
“I found it difficult to navigate at times as the business was still quite small back then. However, I surrounded myself with experts and learnt from them. This experience allowed me to develop a huge amount of resilience and now I have an immense passion for what I do.”
Berry also leaned on her transferable skills attained from working in FMCG, utilising her strengths in structure and strategic plan to help Huffer expand.
She continues to look up to other successful brands and retailers in the clothing industry for inspiration. As she is involved in the day to day of fashion, seeing and hearing success stories from other companies helps to motivate her to give her all to Huffer.
“We also have an incredibly talented team at Huffer. Our success comes from them. They are the reason why I enjoy my job so much and why I come to work”
She also said that she enjoys product development and sales as they provide her with a constant challenge to tackle.
“There are never two days that are the same in the retail fashion business.”
If Berry could go back and time, she would advise her younger self to take things slow.
“I think I went too fast with not enough in my toolkit. Once I learnt to slow down, my role became much easier. Now, I listen more than I talk. That is a skill you can learn and I encourage anyone who wants to learn to do that first.”
