Behind the scenes of Country Road’s good business journey: Video

Last week, Country Road managing director Elle Roseby shared how the retailer is redefining what it means to be a good business as part of our 2023 series of Masterclasses. 

Here, we highlight some of the major turning points in that journey, as well as Roseby’s top piece of advice for other businesses looking to become more purpose-driven. 

You can watch her Masterclass sponsored by Adobe here.

1. It started with a mandate from parent company Woolworths Holdings

The journey began back in 2015, when Country Road’s parent company, South Africa-based Woolworths Holdings, developed the Good Business Journey framework. Country Road Group was involved in the development of that framework, but it was up to each individual brand within the group to apply it in its own way. 

“The DNA of Country Road is very much around natural fibres, and we thought, ‘How could we be more responsible in the sourcing of those natural materials?’” Roseby said. 

“So then, we started working with Australian cotton, and we started using Australian merino wool, and those programs were very successful. And as we were starting to work with Australian farmers and of course, Australian materials, we then really wanted to take it to that next stage.”

In 2019, Country Road became the first Australian retailer to partner with technology company Oritain, to verify the origin of its natural fibres.

“We wanted to make sure that what we were saying, we could really trace,” Roseby explained. 

2. Which led to a wider conversation about what it really means to be Australian

As Country Road started thinking more deeply about what it meant to be an Australian brand, through its use of Australian natural fibres, it became clear that First Nations communities needed to be part of the conversation. 

In late 2019, the brand started working with its first Indigenous model, Billie-Jean Hamlet, and Roseby was struck by the response. 

“Billie said she felt that her ancestors were watching over her. And she mentioned that she hoped that she was inspiring other young Indigenous women to believe in themselves and to chase their dreams,” Roseby recalled. 

“When that feedback comes back to you, you can’t help the move by something like that. It was a real moment for us.”

From there, Country Road expanded its work with First Nations talent, including model Nathan McGuire and creative Nina Fitzgerald, and found that it resonated strongly with customers. 

“Our customers were really proud of the journey that the brand was on. It wasn’t just our belief in it, but it was also [that] our customers [were] responding really positively to what we were talking about, what we were showcasing – a really important part of the diverse history of Australia,” Roseby said. 

“And that’s when we realised that we really needed to have a level of cultural advisory support in our business.” 

3. And meaningful partnerships 

Following those initial campaigns, Country Road started working with Yatu Widders-Hunt, a director at Indigenous social change agency Cox Inall Ridgeway, who helped the business form meaningful partnerships with the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair Foundation, Country to Couture runway show and National Indigenous Fashion Awards. 

“Of course, once we started going down that path, we thought, ‘Where are we with our Reconciliation Action Plan?’” Roseby said. 

Cox Inall Ridgeway and some of Country Road’s other key partners helped it develop a Reconciliation Action Plan, and it was implemented last September. 

“[The work] has been intentionally slow and purposeful, because we need to learn a lot,” she said. “Anybody can do a collaboration, but for us, it was [about figuring out] how we create real change and where the support needs to be?

“I think the most important part of our journey is [understanding] that we don’t know everything, and that’s why we’re about relationships. We’re about learning from our partners and holding hands.” 

In a similar vein, Country Road started working with Landcare Australia to regenerate Australian farmlands through the Biodiversity Project. Launched in October 2020, Country Road committed $600,000 to the project over three years. 

“It was great that we were working with Australian farmers, and our teams got to visit those farms, but then we asked ourselves that next question, and that was, ‘How can we actually help here?’ And that’s where the biodiversity project came through,” Roseby explained. 

4. And culminated in the launch of the Climate Fund

Now, eight years after Country Road first began its Good Business Journey, it is about to announce the inaugural recipients of its recently launched Climate Fund. 

The fund, which will see Country Road invest $1.5 million over the next three years into start-ups working to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in fashion, ties together all of the work the retailer has been doing with First Nations communities and Australian farmers, as well as emerging areas of focus, such as circularity. 

“We work with some incredible businesses that are really wanting to make a change in society and the way we look at waste materials. There’s a lot of businesses that can’t scale up. They can’t get the funding,” Roseby said. 

“We believe that we do have a responsibility in that. We need to come up with more climate-focused solutions. There is a waste problem. And we need to solve waste problems. How can we be funding some of those solutions? It really came from that intention.”

5. Not the end of the journey 

While Country Road has come a long way from where it was back in 2015, the journey is nowhere near over. And that is the top piece of advice that Roseby had for other brands: to see it as an ongoing process.

“It’s just going to evolve,” she said. 

“The most important part is that you allow it to gather momentum, that you don’t think that you have to have the big solve, that you just start somewhere that’s meaningful to your business, to your teams, that makes sense, that people can really get behind and be motivated by. Don’t put the brakes on it. Allow it to develop, allow it to grow. Find a way to fund it and have great depth to it.”

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