Retail adventurer

Jan Cameron is hardly a household name in Australian business, which is hardly surprising given she spent a big chunk of her career in New Zealand. But her amazing story – and her $518 million fortune – are two good reasons for every entrepreneur to study her success strategies.

Cameron is best known as the woman who founded outdoor wear Kathmandu and then sold it to private equity at the height of the bull market in 2007.

But her story starts many years before that, when she dropped out of university in the 1970s and started an outdoor company called Alp Sports, selling sleeping bags she sewed at home. She sold this business just before the 1987 crash (she would later buy it out of receivership) and started Kathmandu, which would go on to dominate its segment.

This year, Cameron reemerged as the buyer of collapsed retailer Australian Discount Retail, which owns the Go-Lo, Crazy Clarke’s and Chickenfeed. It was a bold and brilliant move – while ADR’s previous private equity owners had failed to understand the business, Cameron and her new sidekick Robert Atkins (who helped rescue Harris Scarfe) appear to have managed a quick turnaround and now plan to invest $80 million in the business, which is called Retail Adventures.

Cameron is one of the most reclusive figures in Australian business and gave very few interviews during her time in charge of Kathmandu. In today’s Australian Financial Review, she gives some rare insights into her business philosophies and methods.

Here are few of the best ideas for entrepreneurs.

Timing is everything

Cameron’s ability to pick the top of the market (in 1987 with Alp Sports and then in 2007 with Kathmandu) and the bottom of the market (with ADR earlier this year) have helped make her very wealthy. Not that there is always a great science to her decisions. Her decision to sell Kathmandu was inspired partly by a health scare and partly by a feeling that the business had been so good for so long that she couldn’t get any more out of it.

Branding is crucial

Having built such a successful brand in Kathmandu, Cameron has learnt to leverage brands that have a strong connection with customers. In ADR for example, the Chickenfeed brand, which has a strong history in Tasmania as a discount chain, is quickly becoming the flagship. Go-Lo stores in Victoria have already been rebranded as Chickenfeed stores with spectacular results – sales are up 50% in the first weeks of trade.

“[Chickenfeed] has got personality and history,” Cameron says. “It represents fun, while offering good value. Those things are terribly important: not only for the customer, but also for the staff.”

You’re never too important

One terrific anecdote from the interview concerns Cameron’s trip to the Victorian regional town of Hamilton for the opening of a Chickenfeed store. Rather than driving a car or flying, Cameron insisted on taking a van full of stock for the store. And then she insisted on making all her senior executives do the same.

“I tell all my managers: ‘Don’t drive a car when you can take a van and use the trip to move stock to the stores.'”

Keep reinventing the wheel

Cameron is clearly very good at selling businesses at the right time, but she’s not scared to go back into a sector and try and take on her old companies. Indeed, she’s now plotting a new chain that would compete with Kathmandu. “I like experimenting. I think we can do the same quality at half the price. It’s a market that’s far from saturated.”

No doubt there would be some Kathmandu executive quaking at the thought.